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.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

” So for the deal, investors on both sides converted to common, we split the combined company 55/45, Matt became CEO, and Greg led a new Series A financing into the combined company. For example, here are the chapters in Part Five: Sales by Anita Absey (p. .” I answered, “Deal.” Matt was still CEO.

Fractional CTO 70

Fractional CTO Cofounder Startup Lead Investor 70

www.huffingtonpost.com

MAY 10, 2011

Ive occasionally worked with executive recruiters, for example in hiring a CTO for my first company, Eve.com. To sum up, heres what I would do again as a non-technical founder looking for a technical co-founder or CTO. Minted.com is both a global design community and stationery retailer. Dove Ad Casts Spotlight On Madison Avenue.

CTO 43

CTO CTO Hire PHP Cofounder 43

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2014

The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 269

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 269

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2017

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. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO.

Partner 140

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Cofounder 140

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

Because you have a unitary focus on financing your company or you die you seem not to miss a beat in thinking about the last meeting and the funder has been whipsawed in 20 directions. Last time we met I didn’t have my CTO with me. Would it be alright if I brought her by your offices for a super quick coffee?”

Software Review 381

Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 258

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Equity 258

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

The key members of the team CEO, CTO, Principal investigator, need to be actively engaged talking to customers, partners, regulators, etc. understand the core customers and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. identify financing vehicles before you need them.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

The rest of our team included the founding CTO of Maker Studios (Ryan Lissack) and the CEO of DataSift (Tim Barker) so we seemed to all be in good company of ex Salesforce execs looking to make a difference. For some of my more skeptical portfolio companies I simply asked them to run a trial of inbound sales calls and they were shocked.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2011

The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 240

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 240

Gust

APRIL 13, 2014

The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 179

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 179

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2010

The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. In this article, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 230

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 230

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

It encourages a bit too much FOMO (fear of missing out) and over-valuation in companies and a desire to do huge financing rounds to be perceived as the “knock-out winner.” 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 Not Google.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

One other big tell for me is the CEO’s grasp of the sales pipeline. I can’t tell you how many CEO’s I’ve met with who can’t walk me through the details of their sales pipeline. Who does finance report to? Who does sales report to? You’re slitting that stuff? Then what does COO mean?

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Entrepreneur Homepage Startups Starting a Business Home How-To Guides Startup Basics Business Ideas Business Planning Startup Financing Success Stories Home-Based Business Starting a Business Play Video How to Take a New Product from Just an Idea to a Business (Video). Financing Some Jobs Act Proposals Make Headway.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Duct Tape Marketing

MAY 4, 2022

You know, they could probably run some areas of the business, but they don't necessarily have the pure domain expertise to be a chief marketing officer or a chief technology officer in a similar size company. So now it's the chief revenue officer, right. They could probably run chart.

CTO 79

CTO Cofounder Networking Operations 79

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

The Financier (Finance Manager): Assesses the viability & profitability of the business and product — This is vital when looking for investors. Additionally, your Finance Manager should understand the relationship between data, decisions, and people. Your initial marketer needs to focus on both aspects.

Software Review 54

Software Review Technical Review CTO Hire San Antonio 54

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. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

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.

CTO Hire 113

CTO Hire Hiring Bandwidth Metrics 113

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. VCs don’t have the same net worth litmus test and great entrepreneurs have a ton of sources for seed money to get financed very early. Great companies are comprised of great individual point people or functional leaders.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

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

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Finance | Tuesdays. Sales & Marketing | Wednesdays. Financing a Small Business. Office and Operations. Financing A Small Business. Personal Finance. SALES & MARKETING. TECHNOLOGY. Technology. Consider whether or not youll be raising financing down the road. Innovation | Fridays.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO Equity Iowa Technical Cofounder 40

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

BlueVine, which is based in Redwood City, California, offers online working capital financing to small- and medium-sized businesses in many industries. I wanted to make the process of obtaining small business financing significantly easier and faster for business owners like my dad. In other words, building BlueVine was personal.

California 143

California Small Business Finance Cofounder 143

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 19, 2010

Instead, the CTO there met someone amazing at SXSW who turned out to be a big fan (and customer) of the company. At the stage we invest in companies, they often have big gaps to fill—like someone to lead marketing or sales or be a CTO where there was just a couple of developers before. That's the way a lot of this stuff goes.

CTO Hire 99

CTO Hire Hiring Portfolio Early Stage 99

The Next Web

AUGUST 12, 2013

I started my company with 5 friends – one developer, one user interface designer, one visual designer, one marketing person, and a finance person. This person needs to be incredibly skilled in engineering, and should ideally be an experienced CTO. A marketing/sales machine. A business/finance person.

Cofounder 119

Cofounder CTO Hire Startup Europe 119

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. I had planned a balance of large companies and SMB/divisional sales but have changed my thinking. My blog was wiped out.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 29, 2010

As my Opsware head of sales Mark Cranney used to say, “2% of 0 is 0.”. When we hired the head of worldwide sales for Opsware, using this screen proved to be quite valuable. The reasons are many: The local incentives in sales are particularly strong and difficult to balance without the right kind of leadership.

CTO Hire 78

CTO Hire Technical Review Leadership Sales 78

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

VC Financings: 1. Investors: Matrix (Dana Stadler, who was the CTO of PayPal). Jeremy Liew, a respected VC from LightSpeed, obviously saw the change to ramp up sales. I keep meaning to get him drunk to spill the stories. On the show I’ll I could get him to talk about was his travels on Air Force One. 15mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

This "best value" can be the valuation on the last round of financing. Whatever approach you use, it should be the value of your company that you would sell or finance your business at right now. Or it can be a recent offer to buy your company that you turned down. Or it can be the discounted value of future cash flows.

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 13, 2017

The focus of each person is on a specific functional area (finance, marketing, sales) and traditionally scoped. Naturally, you will have a product or engineering leader for Product, you will have a sales, marketing, or operations leader for Customer, and you will have a finance or admin leader for Company.

Leadership 70

Leadership Engineer Finance Sales 70

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 25, 2013

At this year’s conference—for which a new batch of discounted tickets has just gone on sale —the conversation continues with additional industries and a deeper focus on exactly how Lean Startup works in other sectors. Todd Park, the nation’s Chief Technology Officer, cheerfully admitted as much when he spoke at Lean Startup last year.

Lean 167

Lean Ghana Startup Government 167

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

“In a lot of the industries in which I ended up launching companies, there was a pre-existing profile of what a successful entrepreneur should look like—typically a young, white male with a technical, finance, or political background,” says Aguirre de Carcer.

Venture Capital 82

Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Austin Startup

APRIL 2, 2019

It also requires a comprehensive business plan, sufficient funding, an effective development team, great marketing and sales staff, intellectual property protection, effective management, careful accounting, and (of course) customers. Get more in-depth info on all these needed skills and data points at the next edition of the Austin Forum.

Austin 48

Austin Intellectual Property Startup Texas 48

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

This required a repeatable and scalable sales process, which required a professional sales staff and a product stable enough that customers wouldn’t return it. If the founder was lucky, he got to stay as chairman or CTO. A 20th century VC was likely to have an MBA or finance background. Hire a CEO to Go Public.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Austin Startup

APRIL 8, 2019

More Austin Events for the Week of April 8 April 8: Co-Founders Wanted Austin Meet Up April 8: Austin Clojure Meet Up April 8: Austin Virtual League Meet Up April 8: Learn to Code: JavaScript 101 April 8: Top 10 Product Management Mistakes & How to Avoid Them April 9: Austin CTO Summit 2019 April 9: The Future of Finance April 9: Austin Forum: (..)

Austin 51

Austin Startup PHP Cofounder 51

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

It’s why raising a round of capital often feels like a hollow victory because it almost feels like a temporary reprieve from the Grim Reaper and in a way every new round just sets the bar higher to clear for the next round of financing or the hope of reaching profitability. VCs suck as sales and raising money is a sale.

Burn Rate 238

Burn Rate Term Sheet CTO Hire Fractional CTO 238

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

It has historically been the case that VCs would rather fund the promise of 100x in a company with almost no revenue than the reality of a company growing at 50% but doing $20+ million in sales. This “overnight success” was first financed in 2004. This is true in consumer but it’s also true in enterprise software.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital LP Valuation Later Stage 363