Great question, Benny! I'd say yes and no.

Yes in that I've spent enough time QA-ing tech products and working with various developers and tech teams to have a better idea of the pitfalls to look out for and the questions to ask (as well as good, detailed direction to give). That's definitely an advantage of experience.

But at the same time, I think it makes me a lot more wary of relying on bespoke systems. I actually have one super early stage tech-related project on the backburner, simply because I don't feel confident in the tech and viability of the MVP. I'm sure if I had the time, I could find the perfect devs to round it out, but since it isn't my main focus (and I don't have the time right now to make it my top priority), I'm kind of tabling it. If/when I do get back to it, I think I'll probably get a co-founder CTO on board, just because I need someone more knowledgeable and discriminating than me to weigh in on what's "good enough" - even just for the beta version MVP.

But also yes to your last question: I am definitely a lot better at evaluating a developer or purchased solution, just because I've seen so many things go wrong, so I have my go-to's to test out and look for. I also find it really important to push the limits and test things every which way. When I test a tech product, I'm not testing for normal consumer behavior. I want to know how the product reacts when a user does some weird, unlikely behavior (testing to intentionally break the system, pretty much), because in my experience, that's where I find things fall through the cracks. Because no one ever expected a user to interact with the tech that way. I'd rather push the limits and take way longer in the QA process than deal with the repercussions in a real-life business or consumer situation.