Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte. Did anybody hold patents that would prevent us from using this technology?

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence CTO Hire 418

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We want to make a bet that your Lean Launchpad class can apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification. The gamble was that we could train Professors doing hard-core science, who had never been near a startup or Silicon Valley, to get out of the building and talk to customers and Pivot as easily as someone at a web startup.

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

And just so it’s clear that I practice what I preach … When it was time to bring on a CTO at Maker Studios in the early days, I passed over many local LA video CTOs and found the one guy I KNEW could deliver magic for us. We brought Ryan Lissack down from San Francisco to become Maker’s CTO and the rest is history.

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CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

View from Seed

JULY 31, 2014

Furthermore, one of our recent investments was in Silicon Valley, as all three of us have lived and worked there. These two marketing and publishing platforms, respectively, allow for a more intimate relationship between creators and their audience. We opportunistically invest in other geographies across the country as well.

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Seed Stage B2C Technical Review Disintermediation 272

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? eHarmongy) as an acting CTO. Of course, thats probably even more true in Silicon Valley. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

This is classic “Innovator’s Dilemma” market conditions. Another major hire was Ryan Lissack who joined as CTO. Needless to say I think Ryan is one of the most talented engineering leads in LA but I’d stack him against anybody in the Valley, too. Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley and Who Will Win.

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. Even back then the advisor was a well-known name in Silicon Valley. Opportunities are not just about sales, marketing or product. Death by Spreadsheet.

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Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

The limited partners could put their money in the stock market, but instead, they give it to you, the venture capitalist, which is much more risky, but you’re promising them huge returns. — Getting Keen Home’s smart vent to market was no small task. So there’s what called spot market, and a futures market (for parts).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

My first job out of school was at one of the early bioinformatics companies in Silicon Valley, working as the head of technical services. I was in charge of all product management and marketing for the first year-and-a-half, that was a great learning experience with a very talented team of folks. Tell Rod about the LA CTO Forum.

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Notes Wadhwa, “Jason [Calacanis], Fred [Wilson], and Silicon Valley VC’s, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. At the margin you can make yourself better at sales, product design, marketing, leadership, capital raising, etc. Wadhwa is entitled to his point of view and he may be right.

Silicon Valley 289

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur United States Leadership 289

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Brilliant ad agencies and clever marketing communications experts. Local MVP (most valuable professional) customers are critical in helping Microsoft penetrate foreign markets affordably and effectively, providing the firm its most effective marketing communications and saving it hundreds of millions of dollars in support costs.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

The beauty of Silicon Valley and the ethos it has driven in all of us is acceptance of failure and a profound respect for those who at least try. Marc Berte, the CTO, and a masters from MIT, is exceptionally gifted. Of course we threw at him every skepticism of the market that we had heard or thought.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

The Next Web

JANUARY 23, 2014

She previously served as the Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Smule , where she remains an advisor to the Board of Directors. Marketing is often treated as a bad word in Silicon Valley. But the truth is that many of the best products are created by marketing geniuses.

Product 147

Product Elevator Pitch Silicon Valley Vertical 147

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 25, 2011

As I talked about this model with several friends in Silicon Valley I always heard the same refrain, “we don’t invest in content business – they are ‘hits driven’ ” I had to laugh a bit at at the irony of this. And this is at the same time that content has become more predictable. More on this soon.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

Growthink Blog

OCTOBER 23, 2015

It was business star-studded affair - 150 Silicon Valley technology executives and investors gathered together to network and brainstorm on IoT - described by many as fundamental a technology shift as the emergence of the Internet itself was in the 1990's. New Business Models. The result?

Internet 48

Internet CTO Hire Fractional CTO Silicon Valley 48

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Dr. Marcos Athanasoulis, CTO of Harvard Medical School discussed this idea with me recently. Michael Aginsky, CTO of Gibbons P.C. Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. For you, readers, here they are: Sponsor. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here.

Cloud 117

Cloud Fractional CTO Entrepreneur Bandwidth 117

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

We are purpose-built to not only invest pre-product but also to help accelerate your path to product-market fit with our decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience along with our active CXO advisory board. will be a great fit with the Salesforce marketing cloud. First check to seed?—?congrats Rebel exit to Salesforce.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

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. Putting forward the right product for the market is absolutely key, but don’t confuse that with putting forward the BEST product.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

Correction: Last week's CTO position at Modcloth is actually a San Francisco opportunity, not Pittsburgh. ROBLOX ( www.roblox.com ) is a web/game startup in Silicon Valley that you have probably never heard of--unless you were an eight year old boy, in which case you're probably not qualified for this position.

San Francisco 92

San Francisco CTO Hire Developer EC2 92

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

We have companies in Chicago, San Francisco (and elsewhere in Silicon Valley), Omaha, and New York. Some say it’s a marketing and story-telling problem. Talking design was Brian Kalma, design chief at Blade, a startup foundry launched by Paul English, former co-founder/CTO of Kayak.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

MITX : Non-profit trade association hosting many events focused on digital marketing and internet business. Mass TLC Unconference: Large annual conference put on by the MA Technology Leadership Council. link] – Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay. Next major event? Future M on Oct 16.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Dave’s a great guy with a good sense of humor and a broad knowledge of the market, which is why I was excited that he could be on the show. Investors: Matrix (Dana Stadler, who was the CTO of PayPal). It is a platform to help brands building viral marketing campaigns. 15mm in Series A. Read more: TechCrunch.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

thebarefootvc

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

At the Clinton Global Initiative last September, Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay, announced a commitment from his philanthrocapitalist firm to invest millions of dollars in mobile applications and services, with a focus on developing markets globally.

Silicon Valley 45

Silicon Valley India Africa Burma 45

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Last week ZipCar began trading and has a market cap of about $1 billion. Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Im a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned East Coast VC. Author howerl. Read More ».

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. They looked nervous at having to speak with me impromptu and without the benefit of financial figures to scoff at, product pitches that they’ve seen 100 times and a market sizing to unpick. Page 1: Market Size. $3 I wasn’t feeling it. But these two certainly were.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

The Next Web

DECEMBER 31, 2013

Dries Buytaert is the co-founder and CTO and Acquia , a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for open source content management system Drupal. Without a vibrant exit market, it’s harder to attract both entrepreneurs and investors. Silicon Valley is a state of mind.

Europe 149

Europe Government Silicon Valley Entrepreneur 149

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Quip has redesigned office-productivity software for the mobile age. Product Hunt digs up the best new products buried in the noise of today’s startup market by using an upvoting system. High-quality new startups with no connections to Silicon Valley have a shot at getting discovered on Product Hunt. Product Hunt.

API 60

API Software Review Technical Review Startup 60

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

examined over 20,000 VC-backed companies and found that women’s positions have primarily been in sales and marketing, rather than more “heavy-hitting” roles like chief technology officer and so on. Silicon valley tends to have a bias towards a certain startup founder stereotype (i.e.

Venture Capital 82

Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory&# for Seattle or for any regional market, really. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. The ingredients are all here.

Seattle 317

Seattle Silicon Valley Technical Review Los Angeles 317

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

And they turned that from a tiny little seed into a quite useful, complicated project by gradually increasing its complexity in a highly polarizing political environment where everybody wanted Obamacare to fail.

Lean 165

Lean San Francisco Cofounder Programming 165

Scalable Startup

JUNE 21, 2011

Over the past few weeks I’ve been casually looking for someone to work with, to develop and market a suite of mobile applications ( iOS , Android ) for the entertainment world. That’s not the sentiment of most CTO-types I talk to. The economy has changed the focus to short term survival, not entrepreneurship (except in Silicon Valley).

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Los Angeles 20

Growthink Blog

JULY 2, 2014

But even if only 1/10 of the productivity and efficiency promises shared in Palo Alto last week come to pass, IoT represents a business opportunity so large, multi-faceted, and all-encompassing as to make even the most grizzled and cynical market observers more than a little giddy.

Internet 101

Internet Silicon Valley Aggregator America 101

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

He also founded and served as chief technology officer of Life Magnetics. I think the epiphany was when we closed down Life Magnetics …It was hard to find that right product-market fit. The technology was working, but finding that market fit was challenging. …. …We Want to be a guest on the show?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. " 34; To which I say "we don't think we can time markets." How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. But I don’t think so.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Diego Basch

JANUARY 27, 2012

In Silicon Valley many people treat the concept that “ideas are worthless, it’s all about execution” as gospel. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there’s no market for startup ideas suggests there’s no demand. This has always sounded illogical to me. Patent number 5771354.

Silicon Valley 38

Silicon Valley Marketing Demand Reputation 38