Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else. Todd Park convened the team that saved Obamacare.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

Being relatively a new service trend in today’s tech-driven world, CTO-as-a-Service (CaaS) is notably gaining its momentum. Though CTO as a traditional full-time position exists for decades, some companies do not feel they need a technology executive. Ideal scenario assumes there’s a CTO in house. By referring to

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 31, 2011

At a board meeting yesterday, a management team was talking about their hiring needs and some of the challenges they're having hiring great people. Here's a simple tip: track hiring analytics and assign them to someone. If you're not interviewing enough people, you're not going to be able to hire someone--simple as that.

CTO Hire 120

CTO Hire Hiring Bandwidth Metrics 120

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 6, 2015

by Tal Segalov, CTO & co-founder of Mintigo. So how do you become a leader in social commerce without household name attached to your brand? Hire the right marketing team. This is crucial for businesses to succeed in finding the right customers are the right time.

CTO Hire 100

CTO Hire Cofounder Social Media Mobile 100

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 15, 2018

Earlier this week, I was discussing company naming with a new entrepreneur, one that I used to work with at Edgecase (when I served as their Chairman of the Board). A company name should have longevity and it shouldn’t be limiting (as you eventually?—?and I think really hard when I’m naming a new startup. and hopefully?—?grow

Naming 48

Naming Cofounder CTO Hire Vertical 48

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). File a provisional patent, register a trademark, and reserve your company domain names. Of course, a real contract or purchase order from a big customer is even better. Build qualified advisory board.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Sweat Equity CTO Hire 281

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). File a provisional patent, register a trademark, and reserve your company domain names. Of course, a real contract or purchase order from a big customer is even better. Build qualified advisory board.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

Our industry just took one big step towards legitimacy with the hiring of renowned media exec Ynon Kreiz to run Maker Studios. This followed an investment late last year by Time Warner in the company in a round totaling $36 million , led by Rachel Lam , head of their investment group. “Without you none of this would be possible.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems. For lots of reasons that never worked out, but I liked him so much that the following year I tried to hire him as the VP of Engineering of Ardent. (He But I was crushed.

Advisory Board 264

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 264

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). File a provisional patent, register a trademark, and reserve your company domain names. Of course, a real contract or purchase order from a big customer is even better. Build qualified advisory board.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Eventually I had a head of Product Management – the best I ever worked with named Tim Barker – politely say to me that this wouldn’t fly any more. Tim had a great solution.

Startup 150

Startup CTO Hire Sales Leadership 150

blog.alinelerner.com

JUNE 21, 2013

Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data. Because I used to be an engineer, one part of my job was conducting first-round technical interviews, and between January 2012 and January 2013, I interviewed roughly 300 people for our back-end/full-stack engineer position. Aline Lerner's Blog. Jun 21, 2013.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 98

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

We’ve recently added talks from: Former US CTO and current tech advisor to the White House, Todd Park; former Facebook engineering director Joceyln Goldfein; Dropbox engineering VP Aditya Agarwal; and KISSMetrics founder Hiten Shah. We’ve tagged the talks by topic , so you can zero in on what interests you most. That’s no accident.

Lean 156

Lean Programming San Francisco CTO Hire 156

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios. And it launched this author’s career and taught me everything I know about sales, marketing, hiring, firing, fund raising and so on. But know that if you don’t go “up and to the right” you might find yourself abandoned or even ousted in the name of growth & returns.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CIO) and a product lead (CTO). File a provisional patent, register a trademark, and reserve your company domain names. Of course, a real contract or purchase order from a big customer is even better. Build qualified advisory board.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 4, 2013

Dharmesh Shah , Founder and CTO at HubSpot and Blogger at OnStartups.com wrote in a recent post on this topic: Never automatically discount a message simply because you discount the messenger. How Your Small Business Or Startup Can Hire A Good Lawyer Without Losing Your Shirt. Why is the person offering you advice?

Small Business 125

Small Business CTO Hire Startup Cofounder 125

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

I want the names of the key buyers, the last time you met them, who the competition is and what are the criteria for a decision. When the CEO of an early-stage startup tells me that they plan to hire a COO I’m usually not interested in the next meeting. You think we’re just going to talk about your largest lead?

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 27, 2010

I mean, you don’t have to build an actual business—you can just mimic the movements and demonstrate something that looks like a startup on paper, without any of the necessary risk taking, lessons learned or even a fraction of the effort—all the stuff that investors like to see. break the silos!

New York 132

New York CTO Hire Technical Review New York City 132

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

I immediately registered a few obvious domain names. I did the earliest bplans.com sites myself, in my spare time, while running a company growing about 50% per year. In 1997 we hired an NYU undergrad to create a better bplans.com site, focusing on business planning and especially publishing sample plans. I was hooked.

CTO Hire 66

CTO Hire New York Software Web 66

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Therefore, if you want to bring an MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ) to market, Werdelin approximates that you’ll need $50,000 to $250,000 , depending on the skill sets of the developers and designers you hire. You have to ensure that the right people come in at the right time, and you have the right decor, ambiance and music.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

Austin Startup

APRIL 2, 2021

I don’t confine hiring decisions to a particular type of person or a specific kind of experience; my team is made up of people that come from corporates, people that were looking for a career change and people who are just starting out. I base the majority of my hiring decisions on what someone will contribute to the team rather than title.

Austin 62

Austin CTO Hire Hawaii Hosting 62

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 previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996).

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

I told them that True Ventures had stuck to their brand name and submitted a totally clean term sheet. You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company. The more senior members you have (say you already have a CEO, CTO, VP marketing, VP Biz Dev, VP Products) then the less options you’ll need and vice versa.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

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.

Fractional CTO 42

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Hiring 42

konamoxt.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

January 18, 2009 Why Your Startup Can’t Afford To Hire a CTO Before Founding Konamoxt, my last gig was the Chief Technology Officer for a local Seattle Startup. Mr. Startup CEO, I’m here to tell you, you can’t afford to hire a CTO. Do they really need a CTO?

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire CTO Hiring Technical Review 40

ithacaVC

MAY 30, 2011

So the board fires Al and, after a search process, hires Brett as the new CEO; Brett is thus hired in as a non-founder CEO. After the management change there are 5 directors, namely Brett, Jim, 1 VC rep and 2 independents. The interesting conflicts arise for Jim.

Founder 53

Founder CTO Hire Early Stage Venture Capital 53

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast. Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or product development. Use a company domain name as opposed to a Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail / AOL email address.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 4, 2022

One of my favorite episodes who should be your first hire, what's your funding plan, Dr. Lisa Cravin shares her top advice from building spotlight oral. And I really wanted a place where the CEOs could go and spend two full days talking about interviewing and hiring and onboarding of people. They could probably run chart. powered by.

CTO 79

CTO Cofounder Networking Operations 79

SoCal CTO

APRIL 9, 2013

Have they used the technologies that are involved in your project? Don''t be swayed by big name firms or other kinds of name dropping. You are looking for someone who cares about the look, but you are hiring the development firm for it''s development skills not its graphic design skills. That says something.

Web Development 204

Web Development Web Developer Los Angeles 204

The Next Web

JANUARY 31, 2014

Based on past experience, the penalty will carry a sweet name (I vote for “One-Eyed Weasel”) and affect any website that has its entire link profile based on guest posts – most of them in medium to low quality websites. Are you finding hundreds and even thousands of search results for guest articles that carry your name?

CTO Hire 138

CTO Hire Search Web Social Media 138

Seeing Both Sides

MARCH 4, 2015

Founders who pull this off are able to hire strong functional managers, weave them into an operating team and grow as leaders with the help of these strong managers. Founders who pull this off are able to hire strong functional managers, weave them into an operating team and grow as leaders with the help of these strong managers.

Leadership 20

Leadership Founder CTO Hire Hiring 20

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

Sure, we’re great with communication, honing partnerships and sustaining positive business relationships thus warranting us the right to CMO titles but that doesn’t mean we can’t be just as effective (if not more) in a CEO, COO, CFO or even CTO role. I would also like to see our creative intellectual property better protected.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

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? This is critical!

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire CTO Hiring Engineer 40

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He I worked at Multiflow, a name you’d recognize, ending up running the OS group.

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Of the techniques he mentioned, I think four are fundamental and critical for any lean startup: TDD (or the even more politely named TATFT ) Continuous integration Automate your deployments Collect statistics The tools to help you do these things are getting better and better every day, but dont confuse tools with process.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. It strokes your ego. You might get a bunch of inbound emails from other press and partners, and all of these things can contribute to a feeling that you’re on your way to getting tons of traffic.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Names have, of course, been changed to protect the innocent: Hope youre well; I thought Id relay a recent experience and thank you. Another question that always comes up when talking about customer development, is whether VCs and other financial backers are embracing this way of building companies.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131