Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

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Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 238

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. “The growth of a successful startup usually has three phases: There’s an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out what it’s doing. I talked about some of that here.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

Equity 120

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). Ship a minimum product now. For a true scientist, the product is never good enough, so it’s never done.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

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. It is to out friend. Enjoyed this post? Disruptive. We get it! I Be specific.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

Two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so there is no equity value in the idea alone. Now comes the reality check.

Cofounder 261

Cofounder Stock Founder Technical Cofounder 261

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

. — Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. The startup process has become demystified – information is everywhere. People had to actually pay you for your product.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). Ship a minimum product now. For a true scientist, the product is never good enough, so it’s never done.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). Ship a minimum product now. For a true scientist, the product is never good enough, so it’s never done.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Sweat Equity CTO Hire 281

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

That’s what a couple of my friends – engineers at Google and Bloomberg who have been following the rise of startup culture with intrigue – told me recently. They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. Every time a startup raises capital, all common shareholders are diluted.

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

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. Case in point, Procore just went public and is trading at an $11 billion valuation. It literally drove FOMO. Instagram selling to Facebook. Maker Studios?—?sold

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Venture Capital LP Valuation Later Stage 363

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CIO) and a product lead (CTO). Ship a minimum product now. For a true scientist, the product is never good enough, so it’s never done.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

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). Startup Basics Does College Matter for Entrepreneurs?

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Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. 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. 5) High Productivity: Kayak had 148 employees at the end of 2010. Post-money valuation probably no higher than $12M (2).

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Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

Waterloo, Canada-based Kik recently passed 80 million users, which was given particular significance from local media who noted that it took the 4-and-a-half year old startup past BlackBerry and its BBM mobile messaging solution. Enjoying the work and highly-regarded by the team, thing were going well. The best piece of advice I ever got’.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Mobile 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Your product and company vision needs to match your appetite for funding. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. And know that just because a venture failed doesn’t mean that you’re a failure.

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Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

I care because by funding a product, you are giving voice to the idea that yes, it probably is necessary—and if we continue to ignore the contributions of women to the entrepreneurial space, we’re essentially concluding that their ideas hold less value. Giadha Aguirre de Carcer via Her Agenda.

Venture Capital 82

Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2011

I focused on relationships, connections, human bond, idea generation, testing products and also I generally tried to be available for others. And we’re here with Dan Martell , who like any great startup founder is wearing his company t-shirt for Flowtown. And a motley crew of other interesting startup founders.

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Technical Cofounder Austin Hosting Cofounder 294

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team?

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Office Space. Virtual Office. How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees. David Crow writes in his article “ Founders versus Early Employees “, “Remember the goal is to incent early employees to have an emotional ownership of the product and company they are building. Marketing Intern.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

This is NOT your 409a valuation (we call that "fair value"). This "best value" can be the valuation on the last round of financing. The third bracket are employees who are in the key functions like engineering, product, marketing, etc. Let's say your VP Product is making $175k per year.

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64

The Next Web

DECEMBER 3, 2013

Accelerators are often exciting, collaborative and deeply rewarding incubators that help you to grow your startup, develop a product or idea, and find follow-on investors. If you’ve never part of a startup before, sometimes taking the first steps are the hardest of all. Then tend to be the better, stronger startups.”.

Startup 153

Startup Cofounder Valuation Dilution 153

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

You don’t need to collect the full set (tech, industry, product, customer, etc). If the founding team is non-technical and you can’t figure out whether you are being screwed by your developers or whether your potential new CTO is amazing, a tech advisor can help by joining you in interviews and reviewing commits.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 26, 2014

As further market proof of the power of Drupal in the enterprise, Acquia has received about $100 million in funding in the past 3 months, which puts its valuation at over $1 billion. Google has optimized this open source to freemium model in almost all of its products. Because they are open source.

Founder 42

Founder Los Angeles PHP Open Source 42

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Chris Dixon , September 12, 2010 My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. Why You Should Write.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Advisor. ); STARTUP. Back in 1997, Randy Parker was staring at a blank whiteboard, wondering where hed find the money to hire the employees and consultants he needed to build his new product. "We We had a rough time early on," says Parker, president and chief technology officer of Roving Software Inc. , Franchises.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO Equity Iowa Technical Cofounder 40

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

This is part of my Startup Advice series. If you’re thinking about joining as the director of marketing, product management manager, senior architect, international business development lead, etc. at a startup that has already raised $5 million the chances of you making your retirement money on that company is EXTREMELY small.

Stock Options 418

Stock Options Stock Liquidation Preference Option Pool 418

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 14, 2017

He’s been a developer/hacker for over 15 years, and he sold his first startup, VinSolutions for $150 million. He started Stackify to solve the biggest challenge he had as the CTO of VinSolutions, so Matt, thanks for joining me. We do a lot of soul searching around how do we built this product, when nobody knows it exist.

Kansas City 40

Kansas City CTO Hire Las Vegas Software Developers 40

SoCal CTO

MAY 19, 2010

I’m planning on going to a Tech Coast Angels mixer tomorrow and the topic for me is whether there is angel funding out there for startups that don’t meet classic VC models. By way of background for the question, there’s a great post by Bob Aholt, a Pasadena Angel: An Angel Investor’s Thoughts on Valuation.

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Hockey Stick NPV IRR Valuation 205

BeyondVC

APRIL 3, 2006

One of the discussion groups that I led with Simon Levene (heads up Corp Dev in Europe for Yahoo and Yair Goldfinger (founder and CTO of ICQ and Dotomi) was titled "Are Internet VCs Dead." Google’s expertise seems to be buying engineers, many times before a product is even launched.

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Fractional CTO 60

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc. 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication?

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Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378