Steve Blank

JANUARY 5, 2023

Government agencies to provide context and perspective on commercial technologies and national security. Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the CIA’s CTO and COO Nand Mulchandani and Andy Makridis. General Bucky Butow – Director of the Space Portfolio. Our class opened with three guest speakers; former U.S.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology China 353

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

LESSON #1: Equip your business with a portfolio map and a 21st century org chart. With industries from banking to transportation being transformed and, in some instances, undermined by new business models and technology, executives are smart to wonder, “Are we next?” . … I can't really give my manager feedback.

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Neither is very strategic nor in the best interest of either set of customers that VCs have (portfolio companies & LPs). So he went on to become the CFO of Fab through their growth years dealing with warehousing, inventory management, facilities, CAC/LTV analyses and of course fund raising. Luckily we had history together.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

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?

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire CTO Hiring Engineer 40

View from Seed

JULY 31, 2014

More interesting, however, is reflecting on what “rhymes” across multiple investments within our portfolio. The above outline opens a window into the ideas crossing multiple investments within our recent portfolio, as well as where some of the next additions will likely originate. Recent Investment Themes. What’s on the Horizon?

Seed Stage 272

Seed Stage B2C Technical Review Disintermediation 272

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Management and Company Building. -->. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Today, he’s the co-founder and CTO of Artillery , bringing console-quality gaming to the web browser. Product and Engineering. First Round Capital. Author: Ian Langworth.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Engineer Software Review Part-Time VPE 52

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

The Innovation Portfolio. Companies manage these three types of innovation with an innovation portfolio – they build innovation internally, they buy it or they partner with resources outside their company. What can companies learn from others’ failed efforts to integrate startups into large companies?

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

We realized that there were certain open positions in our portfolio we wanted to call extra attention to. You'll be responsible for the successful management of the sales organization in order to meet the objectives of the Company. CTO, Modcloth – San Francisco, CA (corrected from e-mail version) Remember that girl from back home?

Part-Time VPE 92

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Engineer Sales 92

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. Introductory remarks.

Fractional CTO 122

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Azure 122

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

If you are looking to expand your leadership team or board , are looking for a part-time executive role or board role , or are an investor looking for fractional executives to join your portfolio companies , you should become part of the Bolster network right now.

Fractional CTO 70

Fractional CTO Cofounder Startup Lead Investor 70

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

And my sense is the trend carries outside of our portfolio these days. You Don’t Need to Show Off for the Fortune 500 CTO: Funding announcements used to be the credibility you’d need to get a meeting with the CTO or other management with purchasing power and a RFP. What’s changed?

Technical Review 117

Technical Review CTO Hire Finance Stealth 117

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% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

Stock Options 343

Stock Options Advisory Board Stock Startup 343

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He wrote a post this long weekend on how he manages the board of DataSift. 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. VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. You should read it.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

That’s why I often say The role of VC is “chief psychologist.” We might help a management team deal with a vexing strategic question or a thorny negotiation but these are mostly tactical. 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 Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money. kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. The result?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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. This is a great configuration for a starting team. What should I do?’. Where Do You Fit? m pleased.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

The reasons are fairly obvious: It’s easy to reference them and understand their track record; they’ve made a ton of mistakes already that they have hopefully learned from and are unlikely to make again; they are probably more adept at raising and managing capital, which reduces financing risk down the road, etc.

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

link] – Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay. Belmont Technologies – CAD in the Cloud (backed by Northbridge and NEA). BitSight - Risk Management (backed by Flybridge and Menlo). Custommade – Marketplace for Customer Products (NextView Portfolio Company).

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

This year was a banner year as boldstart portfolio cos raised over $150mm of follow on capital from some of the top Series A and B investors (highlights below). This means more collaboration with the Fortune 500 and more go-to-market experience as our portfolio companies navigate their path to first customers. New CXO advisors join?—?

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

SoCal CTO

APRIL 9, 2013

And they should not get to count items in their portfolio that were done at another company/job - yes, that''s quite common, especially in new firms. Is there a project manager? Some project managers get in the way of effective communication. But it''s quite different working for large firms than it is with startups. References.

Web Development 204

Web Development Web Developer Los Angeles 204

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 19, 2010

A couple of months ago, we created the Key Hire Wire e-mail newsletter, which highlighted the best opportunities in our portfolio. Our portfolio company Modcloth , for example, just made a great Product Manager hire out of Google. Secondly, and this was the bigger issue, is that most startup hiring is completely opportunistic.

CTO Hire 99

CTO Hire Hiring Portfolio Early Stage 99

YoungUpstarts

JULY 28, 2019

by Ekim Saribardak, CTO of Rewire Security. With the increasing need to transport goods on a larger scale than ever before, transport and logistics companies require a management system that’s capable of handling such complex business operations. What’s more, they offer massive savings on costs throughout fleet operations.

Operations 140

Operations Government Software Demand 140

Cracking the Code

MARCH 24, 2015

We were fortunate to host very talented speakers from our portfolio (Ilya Sukhar from FB/Parse, Steve Marx from Dropbox, Bill Ready from Braintree, Ali Rayl from Slack, Eric Wittman from Atlassian, Sam Mac Donnell from HotelTonight.) gathered at the event. It is not very polished but was designed for a fast read.

API 48

API Fractional CTO CTO Hire San Francisco 48

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% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

Equity 237

Equity Stock Options Advisory Board Stock 237

Version One Ventures

APRIL 11, 2019

This time, I am very excited to introduce Sin-Mei Tsai , VP of Engineering at Shippo , a Version One portfolio company. When we interview managers, one of our standard questions is “How do you think about code quality?” Over the years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Sin-Mei over many lunches. How do you define code quality?

Part-Time VPE 100

Part-Time VPE Software Review Engineer Technical Review 100

Version One Ventures

JUNE 24, 2020

Today, one of our newest portfolio companies, Cape Privacy , announced their seed fundraise in conjunction with the public launch of their privacy platform. This marks the second time we’re investing in Gavin Uhma , Cape’s co-founder and CTO. You can read more details about the launch here.

Artificial Inteligence 78

Artificial Inteligence Cofounder Open Source Portfolio 78

Duct Tape Marketing

MARCH 24, 2022

And to your question specifically, once you start to say, okay, well, where am I in my, I roll on the S curve overall, everything that's required of me, but it very much is a portfolio of curves that you are going to have a number of different curves that you're on within your work. So you're putting together that portfolio.

Leadership 80

Leadership Technical Review Fractional CTO Utah 80

Up and Running

DECEMBER 27, 2018

It has more than 40,000 patents in its portfolio. Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft and co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. It acquires patents from almost every domain. The set of incentives that go around patents, that’s part of how the system works. Inventors should get rich. We should have more inventors.

Intellectual Property 93

Intellectual Property Technical Review Due Diligence Cofounder 93

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 18, 2022

And to your question specifically, once you start to say, okay, well, where am I in my role on the S curve overall, everything that's required of me, but it very much is a portfolio of curves that you are going to have a number of different curves that you're on within your work. So you're putting together that portfolio.

Leadership 76

Leadership Utah Portfolio Technical Review 76

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. Half our portfolio is consumer. On Tuesday, July 21, we hosted the first-ever Boston Consumer Tech Summit.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

Rob Go

DECEMBER 11, 2013

Associates can really help portfolio companies. You also are probably not going to be the person that brings on the SVP of sales for a series B company, or their next CTO. Also, get to know the next level of the management team of the companies you support. But it’s also really easy to start wasting their time.

CTO Hire 68

CTO Hire Partner Software Developers Software Development 68

Ben's Blog

APRIL 27, 2011

Now personally responsible for the aforementioned massive risk, Alfred volunteered to leave his position as Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer to be the General Manager of the then tiny Weblogic division in the crowded, nascent Application Server market. outcome, go about starting a new company?

Acquisition 78

Acquisition Cloud Architecture Revenue 78

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 21, 2017

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% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

Stock 140

Stock Stock Options Advisory Board Startup 140

VC Cafe

MARCH 17, 2023

In a post on the Roblox blog Roblox’ CTO Daniel Sturman said: Today, Roblox provides creators with a platform that enables end-to-end tools, services, and support to help them build the most immersive 3D experiences.

Generative AI 195

Generative AI Stealth IP San Francisco 195

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 17, 2013

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% 7% Product Manager,2 -.3% Advisory Board Member, 1% Senior Engineer,3 -.7% 3% If you are not on this list, just worry about getting whatever your peers are getting.

Stock Options 224

Stock Options Stock Advisory Board Startup 224

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. Thor Ernstsson is the founder of Alpha UX , a product validation company serving real-time user insights to Fortune 500 product managers. I spoke with Thatcher Bell , Managing Partner, CoVenture.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Last week our portfolio company, JumpCloud - who is deep in the DevOps market with their automated cloud server management product – hosted the first annual DevOps conference here in Boulder. It was a huge success – we had over 200 people show up and engage in a full day of deep discussions on DevOps.

Conversion 132

Conversion Agile Portfolio Lean 132