Last week on Tech Tuesday I ran the third reader survey to determine what to write about next. I offered up three possible topic areas that I had mentioned previously: lower level programming, theory of computer science and neural networks/machine learning. Because I thought that this seemed like a bit of a short list I also added “Technology in Startups.”

And here are the results:

For starters, adding the other category (for write-ins) really didn’t do anything as only 2 people bothered. Also, unlike some of the previous surveys lower level programming and theory of computer science really didn’t stand a chance!

The clear winner instead is the topic that I added at the last minute! I could of course have guessed that given who the audience for my blog is. As it turns out I am quite excited to be writing about this because there are a lot of lessons learned that have accumulated over many years of working with startups. I have written about some of these randomly in the past but it will be a good idea to bring them all together.

Here are some of the issues that I plan to tackle. How should startups think about their choice of technology (eg programming language, database, etc)? How do you keep your engineering team productive as it grows? When should you invest in making your infrastructure scalable? What is the role, if any, of outsourcing? Can you have remote technology contributors in a startup?

But I was also excited to see that there was so much interest in neural networks and machine learning. I am convinced that we will see some interesting startup opportunities coming out of that area. And I will definitely write about some of my own learning as I make progress.