Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2023

In the Agency I dealt with a few difficult personalities focused on empire-building and metrics rather than running sound operations. Unless you can translate how your skills provide commercial value, you won’t get hired. Judgment remains paramount. You have to do a lot of networking to create your list and build your network.

Government 174

Government CTO Hire Technical Review Advisory Board 174

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Trust me – that kind of encounter can mean the difference between securing a contract, protecting yourself from getting turfed or getting acquired one day. Equally each of your board members are probably on 5-10 boards. Between Board Meetings. The Agile Board.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. Would love to get in touch.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Establish a customer advisory board. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Create a members-only forum where only qualified customers (perhaps, paying customers) can post.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

SoCal CTO

MARCH 4, 2010

Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment. This is actually fairly common and I think it’s a bit challenging in that the technology roles (from technology advisor to CTO) in a startup vary widely.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Fractional CTO Technology CTO Hire 170

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each cycle was punctuated by a meeting of our Business Advisory Board (BAB). As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough. More than anything, it forced us to take advantage of necessity, the mother of invention.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Austin Startup

MAY 29, 2019

link] I believe that SaaS startups we’ve invested in (either as advisors or investors, or both), such as AlertMedia, Clarify, Edgecase, eRelevance, Fashion Metric, NewComLink, OneSpot, Onor, OrderGroove, Pivot Freight, RealMassive, and ShelfBucks, have natural network effects, some inherently stronger in their industries than others.

Networking 48

Networking Fractional CTO CTO Hire B2C 48