Lessons from Startup Life: My Time at Golf918

Working at Golf918 taught me why startups are incredible learning environments. In a 4-person team, you don’t have the luxury of staying in your lane - you’re forced to understand the entire system, talk to customers, and make decisions that directly impact the business.

The Power of Small Teams

We started with structured agile methodologies - sprint planning, story points, the whole nine yards. But we quickly realized that with such a small team, a simple Kanban board and daily standups worked way better. When everyone can see the whole picture, heavyweight processes just get in the way.

The biggest advantage of our microservices architecture wasn’t technical - it was human. Each developer could own a complete feature from API to frontend, ship it independently, and iterate quickly. No waiting for other teams, no complex coordination overhead.

Communication is Everything

I ended up being one of the most vocal people in standup and code reviews, which initially felt uncomfortable but became a real asset. I learned that good collaboration is about meeting people where they are. The goal was always the same: ship quality software faster.

When I pushed for modern build tooling (moving from Create React App to Vite), it succeeded because I came prepared with concrete benefits: 3x faster build times, better developer experience. Good ideas need good communication to stick.

What I’d Do Differently

If I started my own startup tomorrow, I’d focus obsessively on customer communication from day one. The times we moved fastest were when we had direct feedback from golf course owners about what was actually painful in their workflow.

I’d also invest in testing strategy early, but smartly. We learned that tests without clear mocking strategies just slow you down when business logic changes rapidly.

Why I’m Looking Corporate

Startup life taught me to move fast and own outcomes. Now I want to learn how to maintain that agility at scale. How do you ship features quickly when there are millions of users and complex compliance requirements? How do you innovate when the stakes are massive?

I’m excited to work somewhere with established systems, learn from industry leaders, and understand how small contributions add up to something truly massive. The startup mindset of ownership and speed will always be part of how I work - I just want to see how it applies in a different environment.