Both Sides of the Table

MAY 31, 2013

A special thanks to Jason Lehmbeck , founder & ceo of DataPop , a great LA startup of which I have been a long-standing fan, for championing this event and bringing it to my attention. Tomorrow LA is hosting an important tech event - please consider registering and coming by. Which brings me to my second big LA civic push this month.

Coder 295

Coder Community Government Hosting 295

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

What is a founder to do? On teams I have a framework for tech teams “ CTO vs. VP Eng ” or on sales I have “ Journeymen, Mavericks & Superstars ” 5. I’m pretty sure I’m right based on my own experiences as a startup founder for reasons A, B, C. That’s why you’re a founder.

Framework 407

Framework Startup Retention Sales 407

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

The founders had been responsible for gaining staggering scale in the past 3 years, having been trail-blazers in building a network of talent and an unrivaled understanding of the YouTube ecosystem. Another major hire was Ryan Lissack who joined as CTO. ” Dana & I took a chance on the founders early on.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

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. We are predisposed to backing founders who solve problems in which they have personal knowledge that is authentic.

Cofounder 207

Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We then help surround founders with other talent who want to join important causes but don’t have the startup idea themselves. 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.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

. “We’re all equal co-founders and we don’t care about titles.&# I usually encourage people to think about titles like, “Founder & CTO&# or “Founder & VP Marketing.&#. Functional roles provide more clarity around roles and responsibilities. and my favorite].

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte. She had raised seed funds from a who’s who list of investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Marissa Mayer, Mark Cuban, Troy Carter and so on.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence CTO Hire 418

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

“Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? Founders will continue to take the “growth at all options” path that leads to privacy & trust creep at places like Quora. Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios. Growth, again. The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

The way we dealt with this issue is that we took each senior exec in the company (including the CFO and the CTO) and assigned them to important accounts. Your job as CEO is to be “ chief adjudicator ” not “chief dictator.” But overriding sales leadership is as destructive as overriding product management.

Startup 150

Startup CTO Hire Sales Leadership 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Soon after he was promoted to Senior Architect, our highest role without being CTO. When we started our next company, Koral, Ryan was a co-founder. We decided to give Ryan more than he had even asked for as a show of goodwill. It really only amounted to a few extra thousand a year but was hugely symbolic.

San Francisco 322

San Francisco South Africa CTO Hire Fractional CTO 322

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

I wrote a blog post about being hands on where I argued that startup founders need to be hands-on or in my words, “you can’t run a burger chain if you’ve never flipped burgers.&#. It’s different when you’re co-founders and one person gets the title COO. But even then I think it’s funny.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2011

I turned around and there was StockTwits founder (and my favorite Tweeter) Howard Lindzon. And we’re here with Dan Martell , who like any great startup founder is wearing his company t-shirt for Flowtown. This time on mysterious party bus to nowhere but situated with the CTO & Cofounder of Living Social, Aaron Batalion.

Technical Cofounder 294

Technical Cofounder Austin Hosting Cofounder 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Could you withstand the public scrutiny every day of being a young tech founder and show up every morning filled with enthusiasm? Marc Berte, the CTO, and a masters from MIT, is exceptionally gifted. I wish I had 20% of her confidence, focus and leadership skills at 25. The world needs more Meredith Perry’s, not fewer.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. Few people have it. These are often amazingly talented people who are really strong in some of the skill areas and there is no shame in this.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Salary South America 293

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

It proved to be fortuitous because it allowed me the time & space I needed to get to know tons of founders and VCs and to hone my craft. Some Teams Create, Others Scale (Some do both) There is so much focus these days on founders and whether they should always remain in the CEO seat. Some start, some scale, some can do both.

IP 223

IP Intellectual Property IRR Cofounder 223

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Investors: Matrix (Dana Stadler, who was the CTO of PayPal). ShoeDazzle has Kim Kardashian as a co-founder / company as a spokesperson as well as Brian Lee who was a co-founder at Legal Zoom. 15mm in Series A. Read more: TechCrunch. This includes the place you made the purchase, the amount, and in some cases, the item.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

Colin Kelley, the CTO of RingRevenue , left a comment in my last post about the need to “ mask interrupts &# in order to get work done. Getting Rid of Folders - A friend of mine, Dmitry Shapiro (founder of Veoh), teaches a course called WeekendU. So I often try to stay off of email during the day. Two big advantages for me.

Product 280

Product Technical Review Email Search 280

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. It included one firm who I asked not to call Salesforce.com as a reference (they were our largest pilot customer) and in their kindness they called Marc Benioff (the CEO) and asked his opinion. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

So today I’m excited to announce that Upfront Ventures is leading an $8 million round with some amazing co-investors including Founder’s Fund, OATV, Lowercase, High Peaks, Collaborative Fund and many great angel investors. And for the next several months the founders literally ran the business.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review Cofounder CTO Hire 380

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

The culture is driven by the 20-something irreverent founder with huge technical chops who in a “David vs. Goliath” mythology take on the titans of industry and wins. But markets have changed and I think investors, founders and experienced executives who want to join later-stage startups can all benefit from playing the long game.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital LP Valuation Later Stage 363

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

I spoke about the need of the CEO, CTO and head of Products to be in the same location. We then had a full session with Rick Smith, founder of Crosscut Ventures (along with Brian Garrett). Yes, that was the value that we actually returned as opposed to the value of Ulta. Great exit. -

Southern California 210

Southern California Venture Capital Seed Stage Angel Investor 210

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

I’ve never met a founder who wasn’t acutely aware of his or her ticking time bomb and the sense that failure and humiliation is a real possibility. Very, very few founders have an easy time despite what you read in the press. Strangely, most founders I know don’t have this conversation with the inside investors early.

Burn Rate 238

Burn Rate Term Sheet CTO Hire Fractional CTO 238

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I gave him the same advice I give nearly all over-worked, control-freak, do-everything-yourself startup founders: “Your number one priority isn’t any of these things. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. It’s a very cool vibe at Founder’s Coop. That’s one model.

Seattle 317

Seattle Silicon Valley Technical Review Los Angeles 317

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Then my CTO quit. And the CTO was a super close friend (and former roommate). I had never talked to my CTO about making sure he had no single-points-of-failure on his team – including himself. So I tried to build a team that could own my job functions. I had assumed that my core team was with me until the end.

Founder 372

Founder Early Stage Campaign Leadership 372

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

So a friend recently called to ask for advice on becoming the CTO of a startup. Best to be a founder. That’s a given. Don’t blindly join a company without knowing why you’d join or asking the right questions. He’d be employee number 3. The company was being spun out of a larger company.

Stock Options 418

Stock Options Stock Liquidation Preference Option Pool 418

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Founder, Founder, Founder At Upfront we talk regularly about how 70% of our investment decision in Seed and A rounds is the quality of the entrepreneur and 30% is the quality of the idea. Why did Ring become an enormous success when it produced a hardware product and the market keeps saying, “hardware is too difficult to scale?”

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2012

Or riding a crazy party bus and sitting next to Aaron Batalion the co-founder & CTO of Living Social. Office Space. I always love visiting companies because you can tell so much about the character of the company by spending time in their offices. Nom nom nom. It’s an obvious temptation.

Los Angeles 319

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Fractional CTO New York City 319

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

Collectively (the founders & investors) agreed that it would be sensible to recruit a CEO to lead the next phase of the company so that the main founder could stay focused on the product where he excels and is passionate. Founder: “I just didn’t have the right product focus. Founder: “Yes.

Leadership 363

Leadership CTO Hire Technical Review Cofounder 363

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2013

He believed we had a weakness with his CTO. Founders have to live with the day-to-day consequences of their decisions and are closer to the nuances of the business. The CTO had at-will employment with no notice period. About a year ago I was working with a team whose performance had not gone as expected. So I fight.

Vesting 344

Vesting Cofounder Salary Sales 344

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 16, 2016

One of the most obvious to me was Nanit, that was brought to our firm by my colleague Jordan Hudson who met them team, fell in love with their founders & technology, and encouraged us to invest. His co-founder and COO, Andy Berman , made the smart move from being a young VC to becoming an entrepreneur.

Jordan 150

Jordan CTO Hire Cofounder 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

CEO, VP Products and CTO must all be in the physical location. Also, founders who pitch me when they themselves live in separate locations don’t get very far with me. Outsourcing early often happens when you have non-technical founders who don’t know how to get code out the door. Here are my personal biases: 1.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Bulgaria 335