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Scaling is Hard, Case Study: TripAdvisor

Seeing Both Sides

TripAdvisor may be one of the most fascinating companies I know and so I was excited to dig into their business model as part of my series on scaling. TripAdvisor is more of a classic consumer Internet success story, but with even more powerful network effects and an amazing business model. Magical, really.

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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

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. Massive proprietary databases? I dont think so.

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