Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard. Find the 80/20 - this was my favorite part of the job.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. TripAdvisor, in effect, was a model lean start-up with an engineering-driven, product-focused founder.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54