Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. As a content management system we had lots of write activities and went with Postgres.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Version One Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2016

There’s a lot of debate surrounding the right time to bring executive level hires into your start-up. Every start-up is unique so the same path won’t work for every company and management team. With that said, here are some general guidelines I have developed over the years for building a management team.

Part-Time VPE 60

Part-Time VPE Management Finance Vertical 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics. Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 9, 2010

If you can't find ten people who say they'll buy it, your company is bullshit. I say "find ten people who say they'll buy." I say "get off your ass and produce hard evidence that customers are in your future light cone? ". Since I'm my own target customer, I already know what to build.". Short-sighted, no?

Software Review 312

Software Review Part-Time VPE Houston Cofounder 312

Ben's Blog

OCTOBER 14, 2010

The biggest difference between being a great functional manager and being a great general manager—and particularly a great CEO—is that as a general manager, you must hire and manage people who are far more competent at their jobs than you would be at their jobs. Probably none. Step 1: Know what you want.

Part-Time VPE 78

Part-Time VPE Hiring Wisconsin Matching 78

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. A CTO’s real value is in finding opportunities with asymmetric payoffs. They adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics. Autonomy to self-manage.

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

Austin Startup

AUGUST 19, 2018

You can still get on a panel by finding an existing panel that was submitted and adding yourself to it. It’s not too hard to find the panel organizer on social media and reach out to them. You just raised $10MM from Sequoia, you’re 3 co-founders, and you want to go hire the VP of Engineering from Uber. Don’t worry.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Fractional VPE Austin 48

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. We were going to be guessing.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Thats an important job, for sure, and Ive been called upon to do it from time to time.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Start-ups often hire at one extreme -- closer to a Lead Developer or VP of Engineering -- whereas corporates may focus on their CIO, which is potentially quite a different role. Strategic Report to the CEO or board as an active part of the senior management team. Firstly, theres no one-size-fits-all description.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

devver.wordpress.com

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Boulder CTO December Lunch with Tim Wolters with 5 comments The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. Collective Intellect’s customers use this analysis to inform and measure the effectiveness of their PR and marketing strategy.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Part-Time VPE Architecture Ruby 40

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

They may run a function, such as product or engineering, or they may have a broader operational role and carry a COO title. For example, at one of my portfolio companies, the other founder looked after administration, finance, operations, product and engineering. But then the company hired a VP of operations.

Cofounder 45

Cofounder Founder Part-Time VPE Portfolio 45

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

In other words, the CTO is responsible for all the technical aspects of company processes, professional tech-team management, and strategic decision-making. The same person can be a developer and a technical manager, while a non-technical founder is more likely to be accountable for marketing. The reasons are quite diverse.

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

There’s a healthy balance between allowing a design team to dream up functional requirements, talk with customers, analyze competitors and for technical projects – research the latest cool-kid tools to play with. You see there is a creative tension along the spectrum of time and scope.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

ConversionXL

AUGUST 18, 2021

With a live demo, for example, you engage a prospective customer (or customers) in real-time. From the Flywheel dashboard, you can quickly find any site you’re looking for. And of course, if you have any questions during any of this, our team of Happiness Engineers are always here to help.

Product 122

Product Analytics Part-Time VPE Video 122

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

I first met Steve when he was VP of Engineering at Centerline software, a software development tools startup, and I was a junior in college. In founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel. Scaling Lesson 1: Focus On Finding A Great Business Model.

Part-Time VPE 54

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www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Published on: July 13, 2011 Posted By Angie Tags: Elizabeth Knopf , Finding A Co-Founder , FounderDating , Sorced , Technical Co-Founder , Tips & Tricks. After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. But finding such people is more than a full time job. Indeed, I spend about half my time on it, while Lisa spends about all hers. Expensify Blog. Sunday edit : Still going!

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107