Now more than ever, the FinTech world is the focus of attention for many of us.
With so many new financial services built on the back of blockchain technologies — and others — FinTech offers incredible opportunities for startups to grow, and what is crucial to the success is building a solid development team. In a new episode of the PayPod podcast, Scott Hawksworth is joined by Timothy Partasevich, Chief Growth Officer for Smart IT. He shared his expert opinion about team cohesion, and if you want to build a development team or enhance the existing one, this show is for you.
The main issues discussed were: why it’s so important to have a quality team that is cohesive, what are challenges that a FinTech startup might have to navigate when assembling a global dev team, and what are some of the primary requirements for any FinTech startup.
FinTech has a lot of domain-specific challenges and people have to get along to overcome them. Timothy defines team cohesiveness as a combination of three parts:
- commitment to the team task;
- the interpersonal attraction of the team members;
- team spirit.
Here are some difficulties to keep in mind that the development team may encounter. Firstly, FinTech software development is a complex process and any FinTech product should be built using these technologies so it can be competitive in the market. Also, any financial technology solution needs to be compliant with the strict financial laws and regulations in the operation country.
What can become a reliable solution for FinTech software development? FinTech companies may look beyond their immediate borders to reach and access a greater pool of talents, which in turn will increase the chances of finding the right people in the right domain knowledge. Timothy shared Smart IT’s experience in the field of establishing dedicated development centers and building a development team. He highlighted the company’s principle that one developer works on one and only project. Unlike many software houses, Smart IT doesn’t have developers working on several projects at the same time.
More significantly, some hiring tips were expressed. When building a team, Timothy advised to make sure that prospective applicants have profound knowledge, check if they can think on the spot, and brainstorm with you in the startup environment. Going global opens a lot of hiring opportunities, and, as Timothy noted, “if you’re a FinTech startup or any other startup, your competitors are probably considering it already”.
Different technologies are constantly changing the landscape, constantly moving and shifting, and — this is the key point — it’s better to have a development team that has a kind of expertise in all of them. Whether you’re building a team from scratch or expanding an existing one, people marching in the same direction are able to overcome a lot of challenges on the go.
By way of conclusion, Timothy advised having a solid foundation and understanding all the aspects of product development, business database, and mobile web backend.
Check out the full episode here: Building Fintech Startup Dev Teams With Timothy Partasevitch of Smart IT
PayPod Host
Scott Hawksworth is a tech entrepreneur based in Chicago, IL. After founding a number of businesses that required credit card payment processing solutions, he became interested in the larger payments industry and innovations in payment technology. An avid follower of the crypto payments revolution, Scott is particularly interested in the future of payments and finch in the digital age.
03 November 2021
