Fractional CTO
SoCal CTO
AUGUST 15, 2019
This site uses cookies to improve your experience. By viewing our content, you are accepting the use of cookies. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country we will assume you are from the United States. View our privacy policy and terms of use.
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 3, 2018
The LA CTO Forum recently conducted a survey to find out what our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) members saw as their biggest challenges heading into 2019. We received over 250 responses that provides a pretty good insight into the top CTO challenges. The rating scale was 1-5 with: Not a challenge A small challenge Somewhat a challenge Definitely a challenge Keeps me up at night We provide both an Average and a Scaled Rating that gives much higher weight to 4s and 5s and discounts 1s and 2s.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 25, 2017
Here is the most recent version of an all too common email inquiry from a startup founder. I've removed the two words that described the market - otherwise this is verbatim. I'm working on a start up idea in the XXX market with my partner and we are currently looking for full stack developer to join us as a technical co-founder. We have been reading about the LA CTO Forum and we thought it would be a great place to find him/her.
SoCal CTO
JULY 19, 2016
I’ve had lots of conversations with fellow CTOs about the TechEmpower Web Framework Benchmarks. Some really appreciate the value that they bring to help them understand performance characteristics of different frameworks. Depending on the Technical Performance Requirements for your system, this could be really valuable information that is part of your framework selection process.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
By far the most popular post on this blog is 32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder. It was originally written in 2011 and has had amazing staying power. While I’ve updated it a few times, it continues to get at important questions that startup founders need to be asking. I find myself sending it to startup founders all the time – maybe just slightly less than Free Startup CTO Consulting.
SoCal CTO
MARCH 2, 2015
'As the organizer of the LA CTO Forum , I get lots of inquiries by job seekers and people looking for CTO / VP Engineering talent. I’ve written quite a bit about aspects of this topic, especially from the perspective of startup founders looking for talent – you can find these in: Startup CTO. This includes links to CTO Salary and Equity Trends, Technology Roles in Startups , Initial Conversation with a CTO or Technical Advisor , Finding a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup , Hiring a CTO for Y
SoCal CTO
MAY 13, 2014
'Bob Dorf just published a post Where are the Hackers? Solving the Founder-Tech Gap that came out of some fun conversations that Bob and I have been having. A large part of this conversation is what kinds of advisors startups should be looking for. A little while ago, I suggested that Every Web/Mobile Startup Should Have a Technical Advisor. The conversation with Bob was about what the composition of advisors should look like.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 28, 2014
'There was a lot of passion in the room last week when I presented Working with Developers at the Stubbs Precellerator. I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. So I promised that I would provide a follow-up after the session. This is that follow-up and hopefully it’s useful to people outside of the session as well.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
'Are you a non-technical startup founder who’s about to go have a conversation with a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) or Technical advisory type person? Maybe you are going for a reality check on your current situation - wondering if you have a Weak Development Team or a Startup Founder Developer Gap. Maybe you are trying to determine what technologies might apply that you should be evaluating.
SoCal CTO
AUGUST 29, 2013
'I was just down at Demo Day for the USC Incubator. They had some pretty high quality companies presenting. I just found out about a great award opportunity for people connected to USC (or who can figure out a connection in time). I also have a discount code below for the event. USC’s Marshall School of Business will host the second annual Silicon Beach Awards (SBAs), a $50,000 venture competition focused on innovation in technology & entertainment.
SoCal CTO
MAY 21, 2013
'I''m spending more of my time recently working with non-technical startup founders who are having challenges with their software/web/mobile development teams. I thought it would be worth capturing some basic notes about what signals founders commonly are seeing that cause them to call me, what those signals might be indicating, and what might make sense to do as a founder if you are seeing some of these signals.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 9, 2013
'I''ve written before about finding Web Development Firms in Los Angeles. What I didn''t discuss was how you should go about selecting the right company. I just got an email asking about exactly this: I''m with a new company that needs some software built, but doesn''t need (or have the resources for) a large staff of software developers. They''ve been in talks with some consulting companies, but don''t quite the know the criteria for evaluating them and things like references(and where to get t
SoCal CTO
APRIL 2, 2013
I'm presenting Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP next week at Coloft ( Details/Registration ). I'm going to be looking at aspects like: Things to consider before building your MVP Features often overlooked when documenting an MVP for developers Understanding important metrics you want to measure Risks and challenges in developing an MVP.
SoCal CTO
MARCH 28, 2013
In Web Framework Benchmarks , there are some very interesting and surprising numbers around the performance of various web frameworks. Startup Founders really need to see these numbers. And I hope you are not running on Cake PHP when you see these numbers. Many of us are putting more into the front-end and having the application logic and back-end exposed through JavaScript (JSON) APIs.
SoCal CTO
MARCH 11, 2013
Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." In Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Startup Founder , I mentioned that before you build your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you need to be really clear on your purpose.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 13, 2013
I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. It had a passionate group of 50 people attending. I promised to do this post as a follow-up to the session to provide additional links and information. It should also give a sense of what I covered to people who were not there. Here is the outline of the talk and some links from prior posts that talk to the issues that I discussed in the talk.
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 2, 2013
I've had several Startup CTO Consulting sessions recently where it became apparent that the Founder needed help with the business and product as much or more than the technology. I suggested that they should look for someone like me, but on the business end. Then we discussed how they could go about finding this startup business advisor. Then I got an email that asked: I'm leading the marketing efforts for an early-stage startup.
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 19, 2012
I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs?
SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 10, 2012
I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. It was like having a bunch of mini- Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions all in one room.
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 19, 2012
One of the recommendations I make all the time to startup founders, is to find other founders who have tackled similar problems as yours and talk to them about how they solved these problems. As an example, I'm working with two sets of founders who are both going to be dealing with Getting Started with a Two-Sided Market Business - they are variants of two sided markets, but have similar characteristics.
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 14, 2012
I was just asked about a particular startup situation (seed stage, CMO hire, non-founder) and particularly what compensation and equity is appropriate. I know a lot more about CTOs specifically CTO Salary and Equity Trends 2009-2011 , Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data , Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data , but I've previously written about the issues with Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups.
SoCal CTO
JULY 23, 2012
I received a great question via LinkedIn: I'm the founding engineer and working hard to launch my startup. I seem to encounter a lot of people who want to attach a CTO label to me as I'm the only programmer on the founding team of three. While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit.
SoCal CTO
JUNE 26, 2012
I've done four Free CTO Consulting Sessions in the past month with startup founders who all had run into variations of the same problem. They didn't feel they had visibility into timelines and costs for development of their software. They couldn't plan their business. Investors and early customers were becoming worried about the ability of the founder to deliver.
SoCal CTO
MAY 22, 2012
I recently posted about the Increase in Early-Stage Startup Activity in Los Angeles. In that post, I mentioned how one of the signals is the big increase in number of startup events and the number of attendees at those events. I realized that it has been a little while since I posted about the Los Angeles Startup Community and so needed to update my list of startup events that will be out of date almost before I finish publishing it.
SoCal CTO
MAY 21, 2012
Over the past several years, I've done lots of presentations around a wide variety of topics. I was recently asked by an organization, "Tony, what topics can you cover?" I realized that I've never captured topics that I've covered (I'm always willing to look at other topics), nor have I put up my speaker bio. So, here goes: Dr. Tony Karrer Over the past 15 years, Tony has been a part-time CTO for more than 30 startups.
SoCal CTO
MAY 14, 2012
Ben Kuo just posted on SoCalTech: Are the good times for startups back? That seemed to be the mood running through the cloud at the more-than-sellout crowd at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica Thursday at the first LA Demo Day. At the event, the enthusiasm for startups was palpable. The crowd of more than 1,500 spilled out into hallways, and would-be investors were turned away from the doors, as a crush of entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, wanna-be entrepreneurs, and others looked
SoCal CTO
APRIL 18, 2012
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners - a go to resource here in LA for recruiting C-level positions at startups - was nice enough to compile some data again this year (see last year's Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data ). Even better, my good friend and data visualization guru Steve Wexler of Data Revelations was able to create visualizations of the data.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 2, 2012
Using my StartupRoar as a radar, I came across a great post by Gabriel Weinberg Do you really need a full-time hire for that? Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. The problem is you don't yet have product/market fit, and until you do, you don't really know what to build.
SoCal CTO
MARCH 12, 2012
I've recently received several emails from people looking for a technical cofounder for their startup. I promised I would write this post with some thoughts and ideas on the topic. Here's an example of that kind of email. "I'm looking for a partner / cofounder who can not only head the technical aspects and build a working model of the site, but someone with the connections to put a great development team together when we need it.
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 5, 2012
Aggregage , the platform that powers StartupRoar has added a powerful personalization engine. That means that the site now allows users to sign-up and have their content personalized based on their interests. You can sign-up via the "Personalize Your Content" button on the right side of the interface shown to the right of the red arrow below.
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 18, 2011
I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. I have been through many months with them but because of lack of funds, I spent lot of time doing non-technical work for first 4-5 months, spending time with them on putting pitches for investors, cash flows, budgets, writing business plans, produ
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 31, 2011
As I discussed in Matching Algorithm , I end up talking to a lot of startups who want to become the eHarmony of careers, eHarmony of clothes, eHarmony of jobs, eHarmony of tutoring, eHarmony of services, eHarmony of investments, etc. This comes up a lot and if you are thinking about one of these kinds of startups, definitely take a look at Matching Algorithm.
SoCal CTO
FEBRUARY 22, 2011
Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on Start CTO Salary and Equity at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. He agreed to make this data public which is awesome. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. He was a great presenter to our group. I highly recommend getting to know him.
SoCal CTO
MARCH 3, 2011
I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 27, 2011
Several people have recently come to me to help them source and/or hire full-time CTOs for their startup having found me through my post that looks at: Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data. The first thing I do is suggest they explore if they really need to hire a full-time CTO for their startup and if so, what kind of CTO they need. There's a lot on my blog already around this topic.
SoCal CTO
MAY 10, 2011
A long-time friend and colleague, Steve Wexler, who is great at visualization took my Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data and produced a really need interactive visualization via Tableau. You can find it here: Interactive Version: Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data (US) Explanation: CTO compensation and equity at venture-backed companies Probably the best thing for someone to do is to go to the Interactive Version and look things up using their specific situation.
SoCal CTO
MAY 17, 2011
I was just talking with someone who's new to Los Angeles and wanting to connect into the Los Angeles Startup Community. I told them that I had recently seen several posts/articles talking about how vibrant the community has become. As is usual, I couldn't remember where I had seen those posts. So, I promised I would create this post to help point them in the right direction.
SoCal CTO
JUNE 15, 2011
Branchout , often called LinkedIn meets Facebook, has done a lot in their application to provide users motivation and opportunity to spread the word about the service. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs. However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done.
SoCal CTO
AUGUST 4, 2011
Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
This post is admittedly the outcome of a conversation with a few people over some beers. Some of it is a bit tongue-in-cheek and certainly we are greatly simplifying things. The people around the table included a bunch of us who would be prey in some situations. So, please take this in the spirit intended. The conversation centered around a founder who's key question is "Where Do I Find a Developer for My Startup?
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
I've posted quite a few things on the topics associated with being a Startup CTO. I've tried to collect them together here as a starting point for this topic. Technology Roles in Startups Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data Hiring a CTO for Your Startup Startup Founder Developer Gap Startup CTO or Developer Part-Time CTO Technology Advisor CTO Founder Acting CTO Start-up Advisors CTO Equity - Negotiation After Funding Equity-Only CTO and Equity-
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 20, 2011
One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks? Lots of thoughts here. First, if your idea really is something that a couple programmers can whip up in a few weeks, then you may not have much of a business here.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
I was asked by a reader how much equity he should give out to early employees and to service providers in a very early stage startup. I'll get to service providers in a later post. Founders vs. Early Employees To help with this discussion, let me start with a definition of "early employee." Steve Blank divides the individuals associated with startups as: Founders Early Employees (Employees # 1-25) Later Employees (Employees # 26-125) The reality is that the definition of founder and em
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 6, 2011
I saw a great post from Tristan Kromer Pivoting on Investor Feedback a.k.a Beware of Mentors. It was a top post on StartupRoar on Tuesday. His basic point was: If someone, including me, tells you something isn’t a great idea and there’s no market for it there are only two acceptable responses. Either: "That’s interesting. I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
We have resent the email to
Are you sure you want to cancel your subscriptions?
Let's personalize your content