What is Startup Hybrid Architecture?
Why Read this?
You need to figure out what goes where and how to put a product together.
You want an understanding how to marry up the data, the technology and the resulting product.
Tesh Srivastava
April 10, 2025
5
min read
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Lets get the blueprint right
At Daedalus, we often get asked ‘how do you approach the challenge of getting a new business or product off the ground?’, and ‘so, what exactly do you mean when you talk about ‘hybrid architecture?’. Or, rather, we spend a lot of time thinking about those questions, but people don’t ask us as often as we’d like - so we thought we’d tell you, in case you found it useful.
Tech Products and Solutions are often about the confluence of three distinct elements - software, data and product - all of which can have competing priorities.
Businesses are made by people, and, as a rule, people in the world of building tech products and solutions (whether they be startups or within larger organisations) tend to have a specific or particular area of interest or focus, and it tends to fall under one of those three broad banners - which means, when creating something new, businesses (whether early stage or beyond) tend to prioritise one of those three elements above the others.
So, what is Hybrid Architecture?
Software, data and product can exist as separate considerations, siloed, owned by different stakeholders with competing priorities and interests - customer-centricity, data-collection and data utilisation are all distinct areas of focus which will pull a growing business in different directions.
It’s easy for startups to focus on what comes naturally to their founders and to major in the areas of expertise that the people building the company have made their own, and by extension to ignore elements that fall outside of their comfort zone…but this can lead to problems down the line.
Which is why an important part of the housebuilding process is to work out the questions of what wires and pipes go where before you start putting the roof on - and which, conveniently, is a neat analogy for what we like to term ‘Hybrid Architecture’.
When we work with single founders or early-stage startups, we make sure to help them think holistically about what it is they are building. What software and data pipelines are required to deliver the product? What software and product make most sense with the available data? And what software layer creates the best bridge between data and product?
The relationship between software and data is vital
Software creates data that can be monetised; once the data exists, you want to improve the efficiency of the software to improve its profitability. These are interlinked, symbiotic systems - which is why you need to think of them in hybrid fashion. Product, data and software are not islands.
This is about going beyond an MVP proposition and instead looking at creating a sustainable business with long-term viability at its heart.
What is the final shape of this business? What is the commercial objective that we are working towards? And what is the best, most sensible way of arranging the three fundamental pillars of data, software and product to deliver against this vision in timely, cost-effective fashion?
Not only that, but that vision needs to be communicated to the people in charge of delivering it, and in such a way that a working balance can be found between the three key elements.
This is…not easy, and it won’t always look pretty - and it takes at least a bit of time. The temptation for all companies is to get straight on with building…but this isn’t always the best way. Sometimes - ok, in our experience ‘every time’ - it’s better to take a step back and work out the commercial best-case scenario for a business and then work back from that to determine how best to create the architectural underpinnings which will allow you to go on and build out your plan.
If it takes 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks or 24 weeks…then so be it. A better process means a better build, which means a better, more sustainable, more balanced business.
Taking a step back
We were approached by SportsFi, a team with an idea but no practical or product expertise, to help them build their business. We started by taking a step back, looking at their overall commercial goal of creating a mobile app to consolidate information around sports transfer data and monetising that through a monopolisation model - and then taking a further step back, focusing on the single question of ‘what do you want to achieve with this business?’
Big picture thinking led to a shift in approach, towards the development of a proprietary database system which would source, capture and monetise relevant information - which, in turn, exposed a gap in data supply, which let to a further evolution of the product model to create, consolidate and monetise this data, and develop insights from it, delivered to customers via a web rather than mobile app.
This approach took time - but it also fundamentally changed the scope of the business, lowered development costs and timescales, and created a leaner model with greater and more immediate market fit, all thanks to a hybrid architecture approach.
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