Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 15, 2019

As a long-time business advisor and angel investor, I’m a believer that “two heads are better than one” in building a new business. Very few entrepreneurs have the range of skills and experience to be the solution creator as well as business creator, or operational as well as sales leader. Neither partner needs to be managed.

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www.inc.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

500|5000 Conference Honorees Resources Press Apply 2011 ); Topics > Leadership and Managing > Human Resources > Job Descriptions > How to Hire a CTO When its time to add a technologist to your slate of executives, what are the best practices to follow? Some companies have a CTO focused on operations under the CIO.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2023

Laura Thomas is a former CIA operations officer. Reading how she moved in 2021 from CIA ops into a quantum technology company offered insightful career transition advice for those leaving her agency. Below is the first of her three-part series. Only 15% of my time was doing the more exciting operations.

Government 174

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. But I knew that to be a good decision maker I needed first hand knowledge rather than just a summary from my CTO.

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www.allthingsdistributed.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Main July 11, 2007 The Different CTO Roles I was putting together a short panel presentation on the roleof a Chief Technology Officer in corporate innovation and I once again realized that there is quite a bit of confusion around the role of the CTO. I am posting it here as it might be of generalinterest.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2013

This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Use external sourcing to fill in the non-critical gaps.

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www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

General Management. Industrial research management. What does a CTO do? Operations and Manufacturing. What does a CTO do? What does a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) do in a high-tech company? So what is the CTO job? First it is to ensure that the company has the best technology.

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www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Email us or call +44 (0) 844 3579899 home about services blog labs Chief Technology Officer job description (for web, start-up or corporate) « Upgraded your iPhone to OS 3 but files are missing? Some companies look for a more strategic or a more hands-on CTO. Firstly, theres no one-size-fits-all description.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Use external sourcing to fill in the non-critical gaps.

CTO Hire 229

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YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 18, 2020

Just out of college, I moved to China to seek my fortune as an entrepreneur, starting a consulting business where we helped large retailers and fashion brands manage their manufacturing infrastructure in China. The president was totally dismissive of our technology and manufacturing solution. Small is the new big. The dinosaurs?

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konamoxt.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

January 21, 2009 Why Your Startup Can’t Afford To NOT Hire a CTO As I mentioned in my last post, one of the many things I do as an entrepreneur is to advise other start up companies. One of the common requests I get as an adviser is the help interview and vet potential CTO candidates. So what are you to do?

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blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Chris OMeara Main | Probing Code Quality » 01/31/2010 Startup CTO: Could It Work? A CEO friend of mine recently asked my opinion about Tony Karrers Startup CTO or Developer article. I think the part time CTO could work. A few had the title CTO but they all fit the technical rock star and hacker profile.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You hire people who look good on paper. So one of the surest signs you’ve hired a leader is the willingness of his or her former team to re-assemble. After 6 months – you know. You REALLY know.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2017

As a long-time business advisor and angel investor, I’m a believer that “two heads are better than one” in building a new business. Very few entrepreneurs have the range of skills and experience to be the solution creator as well as business creator, or operational as well as sales leader. Neither partner needs to be managed.

Partner 140

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Brand Officer. Chief Legal Officer.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

In the early days the CEO is the jack-of-all-trades, doer-of-all, famously the “chief janitor” or coffee maker. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. You hire great people. Do you hire more sales people?

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Brand Officer. Chief Legal Officer.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Hire a CEO to Go Public. A founder’s lack of credibility/experience in growing and managing a large company hindered a company that wanted to go public. The VCs would hire a CEO with a track record who looked and acted like the type of CEO Wall Street bankers expected to see in large companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US.

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www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. Too often, however, I have found CTO / Founders paired with business people who not only don't add value, but frequently detract from the value of the business.

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Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Brand Officer. Chief Legal Officer.

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CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

Not because they’re all operating in stealth or pre-product – in fact some already are earning $1m+ in revenue per annum. Hiring Has Changed: Before the press was a way of generating interest for hiring. Now the employees carry your technology into the enterprise via their own phone and cloud services.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Brand Officer. Chief Legal Officer.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

For example, if a chief executive officer manages the daily operation, a chief entrepreneur heads up innovation efforts. And the chief entrepreneur has a staff of chief portfolio manager, chief venture capitalist, and chief risk officer, right? They’re qualified.

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The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 28, 2019

The bulk is usually run by technology geeks who don’t have a real understanding of how to build and operate a business. Blockdraws Technologies COO, Konstantinos Despotakis is a former online casino CEO and also a former Deputy Director of Compliance at the AGCC. Blockchain technologies are still maturing.

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YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

by Steve Owens, Founder and CTO of Finish Line Product Development Services. The focus of the management team is largely internal – how do we cut cost without impacting the offering? A technology start-up is very different. All of this effort takes time away from your management team.

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Product Development Lean Developer Product 153

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 24, 2015

Too often, upper management proclaims the importance of creativity and innovation, but then it does nothing when the demands of bolstering next quarter’s earnings trump making time for innovation, ideation and creation. Consider Four Seasons hotels, which for years had been risk-averse and organized around general managers.

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SoCal CTO

MAY 15, 2009

Companies also use social networking sites in the hiring process, and increasingly, to do innovative advertising (such as the recent Jack in the Box campaign). Formerly, he was Managing Director of both Product Management and of Business Development at Los Angeles Times Interactive.

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David Teten

JUNE 6, 2011

My rough notes follow: Mike Dubno , CIO, Global Markets and Research Technology & Operations, Bank of America. Previously CTO, Goldman Sachs. Panel: Cary Davis , Managing Director, Warburg Pincus, Moderator: Ben Fried, Chief Information Officer, Google, runs in-house technology. 15 yrs at MS.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

recently wrote a post talking about how some VCs meddle in operating company decisions or some executive teams are too reliant on VCs to jump in and make hard calls for them. So operating at a higher level, helping to set the framework for decision making and then sitting down and watching the game be played, is certainly the way to go.”

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

Most large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) and disruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.).

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He wrote a post this long weekend on how he manages the board of DataSift. Spend time building investor relationship long before you raise money. . In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more.

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Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

Obviously if you target enterprise customers, you usually have a very large ACV (Annual Contract Value) and the product usually is complex. We talk about using the product complexity, your target customer size, your contract value, and whether there's individual use case–those four things--to help you decide if PLG is a fit.

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SVPG

JUNE 27, 2015

I would argue that two of the most importance competencies in building great product organizations, indeed nearly any significant organizational undertaking, are leadership and management. And sadly there are many that have never experienced strong leaders or strong managers. Management gets you to that destination.

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Board Effect

JANUARY 15, 2020

Digital governance assigns clear accountability for who has decision-making authority for managing all digital tools and processes for the organization and it assigns accountability for the same. Technology expertise is now a key criterion for many incoming board directors. Best Practices for a Digital Governance Team.

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Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

While ERC-20 is designed for tracking the balances of one type of fungible tokens, ERC-1155 allows a single contract to track the balance of a very large number of types of tokens, fungible or non-fungible [a fungible token is something that is mutually interchangeable with another identical item. Does it have implications beyond SkyWeaver?

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions. My first company was used to manage workflow & share CAD drawings and plans on the $16 billion refurbishment of the London Underground. Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios. “Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? Growth, again.

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