Podcast · 1 hr

Building Zerodha with Kailash Nadh

Utsav Shah · Software at Scale Free Advanced India

Zerodha, India's largest broker, built almost everything in house with a famously small team, and its CTO explains why owning the core product mattered so much. It is a concrete Indian case of the payoff you get when the thing you sell is software you fully control. Listen for the reasoning about dependencies and ownership, not the scale.

  • Owning your core stack lets you move and fix without waiting on outsiders
  • A small in house team with deep context can outbuild a larger rented one
  • Removing external dependencies pays off when the product is the business

It answers 5 questions

  1. How do I build a roadmap without over-planning?
  2. How do product teams keep a consistent shipping rhythm as they grow?
  3. When should I stop using an agency and hire my first in-house developer?
  4. As a solo technical founder, when is it worth hiring a designer versus using a template or design system?
  5. How do I evaluate the code quality of a build I inherited from an agency?

Read with it

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  3. Michael Seibel's crisp framing of holding the problem and customer tightly while holding the solution loosely, the mindset that... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · ~15 min How to Plan an MVP Michael Seibel
  4. Video · ~13 min How to Plan an MVP Michael Seibel (YC)
  5. Directly answers the scoping question non-technical founders wrestle with, build in-house vs. outsource, backed by patterns... YC Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Does Your Tech Startup Really Need a Technical Co-Founder? (Yes) Y Combinator
  6. Design tactics written specifically for developers and non-designers who need to ship good-looking UI without a design... refactoringui.com Book · ~250 pages Refactoring UI Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger
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