CTO Hire Framework Metrics Product Development 
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.
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Startup Lessons Learned
DECEMBER 7, 2008
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. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.
Startup Lessons Learned
JUNE 22, 2009
The more work youve sunk into a product or vision, the harder it is to let it go. 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. Instead of these dead-ends, use the problem and solution team framework and then: pivot, dont jump.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
It also has the nice side-effect of driving down the batch size of work, but thats for another post) This framework for making progress evident applies to more than just scheduling, of course. I used to think a giant flat-panel screen that broadcast our companys key metrics would be what was required to get everyone to pay attention to them.
Startup Lessons Learned
JANUARY 12, 2009
At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.
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