The Things Nobody Tells You About Building a Technology Company
Most of building a technology company isn't technology. Here are the unglamorous realities I wish someone had spelled out: about selling, maintenance, hardware, trust and structure.
Nobody tells you that building a technology company is mostly not about technology.
The technology is the part people see and ask about, and it's the part founders love to talk about. But most of the work that decides whether a technology company survives happens somewhere else: in selling, in maintaining, in accounts and admin, in hiring, in earning trust one delivery at a time.
I'm Avinash, and I lead Incrix. We started in 2019 in Kovilpatti, became an LLP in 2021, and now run five streams with a 15-person team. I wrote about the personal lessons in What Building a Company at 22 Taught Me. This piece is different. It's about the company itself: the unglamorous realities I'd want any founder to hear before they start.
TL;DR
- Everyone sells. In a small company, selling is part of almost every role.
- Launch is cheap; maintenance is expensive. Design for the years after release.
- Hardware runs on physics, not sprints. Every board has to earn its way to production.
- Trust compounds slowly. It's built in public, one delivery at a time.
- Structure arrives after the work. Paperwork and recognition follow; they don't lead.
Reality 1: The technology is the easy part to talk about
When you start building a technology company, you imagine your days will be spent on architecture diagrams and circuit boards. Some of them are. Many are not.
A company also needs accounts kept, compliance handled, proposals written, content produced, customers supported and people paid on time. At Incrix, administration and accounts is a real role, not an afterthought, and it should be. Nobody writes blog posts celebrating a clean set of books. But every technology company that lasts has one.
The code is what people see. The company is everything that lets the code keep shipping.
What I learned: respect the unglamorous work early. If you treat it as a distraction, it will eventually become the thing that distracts you.
Reality 2: Everyone sells
Nobody tells you how much of building a technology company is explaining it to people.
Look at our team's roles and you'll see it written into the job titles. Our embedded architects also handle course sales. An AI backend developer also handles Classory sales. We have a dedicated sales and marketing role too, but selling doesn't live in one seat.
That isn't a compromise. In a small company, the person who built the thing is often the most credible person to explain it. The lesson I'd pass on: don't hire technologists who look down on selling, and don't build a sales process that's disconnected from the people who understand the product.
Reality 3: Launch is cheap. Maintenance is expensive.
The first version gets the attention. The years after it get the bills.
Every feature you ship is something you'll maintain. Every server you leave running is a cost you'll pay every month. That's why our software approach says what it says: traditional development that takes requirements and writes code tends to be costlier to build and maintain, so we "understand the problem, architect an engineering solution, and design the application on cost-effective, maintenance-friendly serverless architecture." The reasoning is laid out in why we build serverless.
What I'd tell any founder: when you estimate the cost of something, estimate year three, not launch week.
Reality 4: Hardware runs on physics, not sprints
Software teams can ship a fix in an afternoon. Hardware doesn't negotiate.
Every board we've built at Incrix Automation, from Horizon Gen 1 to Hexon Atom C6, has to pass through that sequence. You can't skip a step because a deadline is close. And in India, you also design for conditions that don't show up on a lab bench: patchy connectivity, power instability, cost sensitivity and data localisation.
Nobody tells you how humbling that is. Hardware teaches you to plan more carefully, test more honestly and respect the gap between "it works on my desk" and "it works in the field". We go deeper into this in From PCB to Product.
Reality 5: Trust compounds slowly, and it's built in public
A new technology company has no track record. Trust has to be earned piece by piece, and there are no shortcuts.
For us, a lot of that trust has been built in public. Our community channels (#teamincrix, John at Incrix and Solder Minds) together reach over 120,000 people. They were built by our team sharing what they know: design, PCB, embedded and IoT education. Our branding stream has delivered 1000+ projects with a 4.9/5 rating.
The lesson isn't the numbers. It's the mechanism: trust is the sum of many small, consistent deliveries, and it's surprisingly easy to lose. Treat every piece of work as if it's the one someone will judge you by, because it might be.
Reality 6: Structure arrives after the work
Incrix started in 2019 and was incorporated as an LLP in 2021. Recognition from Startup India and DPIIT came to a company that was already doing the work.
Nobody tells you that the formal side of building a technology company (registration, recognition, processes, policies) mostly follows reality rather than creating it. That's fine. But it means two things. First, don't wait for structure to give you permission to start. Second, don't mistake structure for progress. A registration certificate is a milestone, not a customer.
Reality 7: Breadth needs a spine
We run five streams under one roof: Software, Automation, Branding, Education and Studio.
From the outside, breadth looks like opportunity. From the inside, it's also a discipline problem. Five streams can reinforce each other (design makes products better, education builds community, hardware and software meet in real products) or they can pull a small team in five directions at once.
What I've learned is that breadth only works when there's a spine running through it: a shared way of thinking about problems, quality and customers. Without that, a multi-discipline company is just several small companies sharing a roof. We explain how the streams connect in Why Incrix Builds Across Software, Hardware and Design.
Reality 8: Culture is what you repeat, not what you write
Our values are written down: "Equity in mind, dignity in action." Writing them was the easy part.
Nobody tells you that culture is set by what happens repeatedly: how decisions get made, how mistakes are handled, who gets credit, what's tolerated. People learn far more from what a company does on an ordinary day than from anything on its About page. If you want a culture, you have to practise it, especially when it's inconvenient.
Reality 9: The founder is often the bottleneck
This one is uncomfortable, which is why it rarely gets said.
In the early days, the founder's involvement is what makes things move. Later, the same involvement is what slows them down. Every decision that has to wait for you is a decision the company can't make without you.
What I'd tell any founder: watch for the moment your help becomes a queue. The goal is a team that can own outcomes, and that means handing over not just tasks but judgement.
Why it's still worth it
None of this is meant to put anyone off. If anything, knowing these realities makes the work better, because you stop being surprised by the parts that aren't glamorous and start building for them.
Building a technology company means building the product and everything that lets the product keep going. The second part is less visible. It's also the part that decides whether you're still here in a few years.
If you want to see how that plays out day to day, read Inside Team Incrix. For the full origin story, there's Building Incrix From the Ground Up. And for everything we're building today, start at What Are We Actually Building at Incrix?