[brianm]

Reach outside your company. Genuine appeals for focused help are rarely dismissed.

You don't need to know almost everything (and derive what you don't from first principles), that is unreasonable. You do need to have a network of folks you can ask help or feedback from.

Being on a small team without much support will force either very fast growth or failure, and your ability to be intellectually honest (is this true or do I want it to be true?) and identify folks who can and are willing to genuinely help are important factors.

[j88439h84]

I'm having trouble imagining how to do this. What does it look like? Emailing a friend at another company to ask for code review?

[brianm]

I am old fashioned, so I use IM to say things like "Hey, Martin, I'm thinking about ... Does it make sense?"

Not so much mailing out code reviews, but sharing design ideas, approaches, etc. Former coworkers you are still friends with, open source collaborators you have become close to, etc all work.

Basically, build and maintain relationships with people who have good judgement. Help them out, ask for help yourself.