Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He was a very early employee of Facebook , and engineering director there through the moment it blew up. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

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Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

A Model for Return on Engineering Expenses. A Model for Return on Engineering Expenses. What does a CTO do? Marketing and sales. What does a CTO do? What does a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) do in a high-tech company? So what is the CTO job? This is where you should see the CTO.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 13, 2022

For example, if you’re a sales oriented founder that gets backed pre-launch, then an investor isn’t going to assume that founder has any product design skills. I mean trusting what each one brings to the table—and being honest about the process of earning that trust and what it means to having a productive relationship.

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Founder Fiji CTO Hire Term Sheet 159

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2024

Kenneth Wenger – Unveiling the Future of AI Kenneth Wenger is an author, a research scholar at Toronto Metropolitan University, and CTO of Squint AI Inc. His research interests lie at the intersection of humans and machines, ensuring that we build a future based on the responsible use of technology.

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Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Marketing 75

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Depending on the composition of the founding team, you might or might not have near-term holes in certain functions at the exec level – e.g. you’ll most likely need to bring on a CTO/VP of Engineering shortly after the seed round if you don’t have a technical co-founder.

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Part-Time VPE Seed Stage CTO Hire Forecast 195

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make.

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Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

www.huffingtonpost.com

MAY 10, 2011

However, we needed a head of engineering to recruit and lead a larger team to accomplish our larger goals. Ive occasionally worked with executive recruiters, for example in hiring a CTO for my first company, Eve.com. Minted.com is both a global design community and stationery retailer.

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CTO CTO Hire PHP Cofounder 43

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. An obvious example would be in sales. You’re also learning directly about the skills of your sales staff by observing them in action.

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CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Which engineers dialed it in before a big release because it was during July 4th weekend? Who came in the office at 2am when the servers crashed – even on the night of the big company party. We brought Ryan Lissack down from San Francisco to become Maker’s CTO and the rest is history. After 6 months – you know.

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devver.wordpress.com

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Boulder CTO December Lunch with Tim Wolters with 5 comments The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. The Role As a CTO, you paint a landscape of the product and market. There are two kinds of CTOs: tactical and visionary.

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CTO Hire Part-Time VPE Architecture Ruby 40

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

Last time we met I didn’t have my CTO with me. She was one of the lead engineers at Uber. Would it be alright if I brought her by your offices for a super quick coffee?” I always tell people that fund raising is a sales process. It’s hard to completely grok reading it. Can I please just get 30 minutes of your time.

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Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

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. So he would allocate say – 20% to sales, 15% to marketing, 20% to eng priorities, 10% to customer support, 10% to ops, 20% to ‘platinum customers’ and maybe 5% directly to me as the CEO.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

When Roger Ehrenberg & I agreed to fund Nick’s first institutional VC round we agreed it knowing that he was staying in the UK, that he was building out product & engineering in the UK and that he was the CEO of the company. So Nick drove strategy & tech from the UK and remained an active board member and CTO of the company.

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Founder CTO Hire Silicon Valley Leadership 309

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

And search engines like sourcing.io help you build a specific list based on skills you’re seeking. Now your mom has the same smartphone as her Facebook engineer daughter and the tech readers are increasingly judgmental, ready to snark on newness. Word of mouth spreads faster and sales cycles are shorter.

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Technical Review CTO Hire Finance Stealth 117

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2010

Instead, give me the details on how you’re going to make your sales, and to whom, on the first day, the first quarter, and the first year. Show me how much each unique visitor is going to cost you in search engine optimization and pay-per-click search engine expense. Give me granularity. Great stuff!

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Metrics Startup Retention Software Developers 159

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2022

CEO brought in to replace the founder, 5 - 10% CTO, CFO, VP of Marketing or Sales, 1.5 - 3% Chief Engineer or Architect, 1 - 1.5% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

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Stock Options Advisory Board Stock Startup 343

SoCal CTO

MAY 15, 2009

Paul Ollinger, West Coast Vice President of Sales of Facebook Paul Ollinger is the West Coast Vice President of Sales for Facebook. He has also been a Regional Sales Director and National Account Director for Facebook. He has 20 years’ experience as CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony.

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Social Network Networking Los Angeles Fractional CTO 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2016

When we met Shireen (CEO) and Scott (Co-founder & CTO) in late 2014 they had been inspired to create Nima to address their own personal food issues and empower other people to live their healthiest lives. It’s still in pre-sale, but reception from beta testers, previews and the industry ( tech and consumer ) has been enthusiastic.

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Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

Over the last two and a half years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught over 300 teams of scientists how to commercialize their technology and how to fail less, increasing their odds for commercial success. So last fall we taught 26 life science and health care teams at UCSF in therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices.

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SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups and being a Startup CTO : Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March here are the top posts from May 2010. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. they have purchasing intent ).*.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

.&# Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. I usually encourage people to think about titles like, “Founder & CTO&# or “Founder & VP Marketing.&#. and my favorite].

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Monday, March 12, 2007 MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point The NY Times did a piece today on MyShape, a start-up in Pasadena - Log in Your Measurements, and the Clothes May Fit. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. Technology Jobs in Southern California – a Rebound.

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Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

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. You may know how much to pay in cash or equity for your new VP Engineering. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Always seek input.

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Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

We worked with police departments, the ministry of defense, many of the largest utility companies in Europe and a ton of contractors, engineers, architects, developers and suppliers. In revenue terms our first two years of sales were $2.1 Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios. million and then $5.9

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

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 I’m now getting more involved in my new job as CTO and I’m too busy to go back and forth negotiating this.” Opportunities are not just about sales, marketing or product.

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Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

He is also a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Electrical Engineering Department and Editor-in-Chief of the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems. Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting while attending Yale, and continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com. He later co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU and then authored The Lean Startup. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

He was the CEO and I was in Sales. We have about 200 designers and engineers there. We were getting contacted more and more from the sales side about building out a better way to fundraise online. David brought 2 of his co-founders, our CTO and Head of Design along with. How did you come up with your business name?

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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. All passes are on sale now, and you can compare them here. Apply to volunteer here.

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Lean Programming San Francisco CTO Hire 156

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Your most powerful growth engine is your existing customer. This has resulted in dramatic increases in sales. Traditional approaches to marketing and sales will only screw up customer advocacy. That’s right. Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In consumer packaged goods, the benchmark for a “highly successful” product launch is no easy feat: $50 million in first-year sales. Successful demand generation campaigns break down silos between marketing and sales. Seed your launch campaign with advance sales. Definitions of failure also vary.

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Product Campaign Acquisition Social Media 110

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company. And so was his reputation for being verbally abusive to his direct reports.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 31, 2011

Hiring is a funnel with inputs and outputs--just like a normal sales process, except you're selling your company and the opportunity to work for it. You have trackable metrics for sales, site conversions, traffic, etc., If you're not interviewing enough people, you're not going to be able to hire someone--simple as that.

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Austin Startup

OCTOBER 23, 2019

They discussed how technology combinations present an unprecedented opportunity to protect health data, provide improved care, and streamline the path to innovative services for wellness. You found someone that really cares about something,” says Pete Kooman , CTO at Optimizely. Analytics are supercritical for your app.

Fractional VPE 49

Fractional VPE Austin Artificial Inteligence Fractional CTO 49

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

CEO brought in to replace the founder, 5 - 10% CTO, CFO, VP of Marketing or Sales, 1.5 - 3% Chief Engineer or Architect, 1 - 1.5% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

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Equity Stock Options Advisory Board Stock 237

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

Jud is an extremely experienced CTO / technical product manager and developer, but had never been a CEO. Oh, and they are hiring as fast as they can find great people ; across the spectrum (business, sales, & engineering). At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO.

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Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

Marketing and sales will be amplified with the right product or victimized by the product that falls short, and not investment outside of product will overcome that reality. engineers paired would jump from frontend to backend erratically at each sprint iteration. It all starts with the product.

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