That's the opportunity offered when you set up a startup. But it turns out that it is not all straightforward. There were good reasons behind some of those annoying choices and now you get to discover what they were.

This talk will focus on experience gained at a software product startup over a twelve year journey from inception through stock market launch to maturity. It will also draw from my previous, less successful, forays into the startup world.

This won't be a talk focusing on language choice or the benefits of one Agile methodology over another. We are going to look at the fundamental issues at the heart of developing a software product and try to arrive at a consistent approach to resolving them. This will guide our decisions as we develop our individual approaches to software development.

Even though we won't all get, or want, the opportunity to start with a clean slate, taking that thought experiment into a mature product development group can reap insights and benefits.