Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 20, 2020

We are fortunate to invest alongside Union Square Ventures, BoxGroup, and Village Global, along with some of the top product and engineering angels including Jason Warner (CTO of Github), Matthew Prince (CEO of Cloudflare), Sahil Lavingia (CEO of Gumroad), Andrew Miklas (former CTO of PagerDuty), Jamie Wilkinson (former CPO of Kickstarter), Josh Elman, (..)

Software Review 132

Software Review Cofounder Technical Review Incubator 132

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). We brought Ryan Lissack down from San Francisco to become Maker’s CTO and the rest is history. He was a very key player in why Maker Studios was eventually sold for up to $950 million.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

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

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. But I knew that to be a good decision maker I needed first hand knowledge rather than just a summary from my CTO. But as a CEO you can’t rely solely on this information.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

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. CTO, Modcloth – San Francisco, CA (corrected from e-mail version) Remember that girl from back home? The ideal candidate has experience with eCommerce systems, emerging mobile and social technologies, as well as RoR.

Part-Time VPE 92

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Engineer Sales 92

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

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% 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.

Stock Options 343

Stock Options Advisory Board Stock Startup 343

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

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

The technical mastermind behind Replay is Brian Hackett (CTO, co-founder) who has been thinking about and working on this concept for a long time… in fact, his PhD at Stanford 10+ years ago laid the foundation for Replay. Previous attempts have been either too buggy or slow, making them hard to scale.

CTO Hire 78

CTO Hire Web Cofounder Software Engineering 78

BeyondVC

MARCH 18, 2018

GuyPod previously was Chief Architect at Sanctum/Watchfire Security, developers of one of the first web-app firewalls, ultimately sold to IBM. Danny Grander had significant security engineering experience starting in the IDF where he met Guy and into Skybox Security and as CTO of Gita Technologies. which was sold to Akamai.

Open Source 60

Open Source Security Cofounder Software Review 60

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.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

Ben Deda from FullContact convened about 100 execs from our 60 or so portfolio companies for the day. One of the attendees was Jeff Malek , the CTO of BigDoor. We had seven topics of one hour each, led by a different set of execs. The result was an incredible range of discussions across an amazing group of people.

Agile 153

Agile Software Review Denver Database 153

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

link] – Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay. Custommade – Marketplace for Customer Products (NextView Portfolio Company). Evolv Technologies – Advanced Imaging Technology (backed by General Catalyst and Bill Gates). Plastiq – Payments (NextView Portfolio Company).

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

A few years ago, a friend of mine who was coming off an EIR gig at a well-known venture fund in Boston ended up joining one of my portfolio companies part-time as a technical advisor / interim CTO. A couple suggestions: #1: Try solving other people’s problems.

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. 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. Please meet her while she’s there.”

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. Because kaChing prefers its portfolio managers to have a long track record, the marketplace launch (i.e., A portfolio manager’s entire track record & holdings had to be disclosed.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 14, 2011

Last Thursday night, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels joined a small group of technical folks from cloud and commerce related First Round portfolio companies for dinner at Double Crown. It was hard to keep our dinner small as there were very few companies in our portfolio that couldn't benefit from a relationship with the company in some way.

Lean 108

Lean Portfolio Cloud Startup 108

Lightspeed Venture Partners

APRIL 12, 2016

Some of the better known companies in our consumer portfolio include Affirm, Bonobos, DianPing, Giphy, Grubhub, Nest, OutBrain, Oyo Rooms, Playdom, Snapchat, Stitchfix, Nest, Grubhub, TaskRabbit and The Honest Company. I grew up in Australia and I played rugby when I was younger (and much, much fitter!).

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder Cofounder SCRUM Committed Capital 60

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

One of his investors called him, “the best CFO in our entire portfolio.&# ). Isn’t it a confusing title?&# My vote is that co-founders should pick one lead as the CEO and the other should have a functional role & title like Head of Sales & Marketing, CTO, VP marketing or whatever. But that’s a digression.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

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

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

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

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.

Equity 237

Equity Stock Options Advisory Board Stock 237

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. I want our associate to have empathy for the customers we serve — our portfolio companies. These are often amazingly talented people who are really strong in some of the skill areas and there is no shame in this. Was I too harsh?

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

If you presented on your own but have a very talented CTO perhaps your follow up is to bring by your CTO to show why the tech you’ve built is truly unique. Another great strategy is to ask to meet with some of their portfolio companies if you think your tech would be relevant to them as potential customers. Don’t send these?

Portfolio 261

Portfolio IP Later Stage Email 261

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. Over the years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Sin-Mei over many lunches.

Part-Time VPE 100

Part-Time VPE Software Review Engineer Technical Review 100

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. But you may also want to get in touch with people at companies that they have been showing you as part of the portfolio. Make sure you know exactly what the company did on each project.

Web Development 204

Web Development Web Developer Los Angeles 204

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

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

Half our portfolio is consumer. Talking design was Brian Kalma, design chief at Blade, a startup foundry launched by Paul English, former co-founder/CTO of Kayak. Some say it’s a marketing and story-telling problem. Still others point to the collective sensibility and logic of New Englanders as an operating philosophy.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

They tend to have a multitude of side projects, Github portfolios and hacking workshops on the go at once. He is cofounder and chief technology officer of GroupSpaces. Not to say anything against those with great ideas, but it works like this: the best geeks are also the ones full of ideas. Print Save to Instapaper.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

YoungUpstarts

JULY 28, 2019

by Ekim Saribardak, CTO of Rewire Security. It’s important for any company to keep their existing customers as well as add new ones to their portfolio, but the huge amount of competition in the fleet industry makes it paramount for fleet businesses to ensure customer satisfaction. Dispatching and Routing Efficiencies.

Operations 140

Operations Government Software Demand 140