Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

This second kind of seed financing can be a double-edged sword for the entrepreneur and company if not very carefully managed. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging. Investors are dismayed that there are no real customers yet.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2013

When this happens, the organization suddenly finds itself unable to achieve the promises and commitments made to the outside world, whether it’s investors, customers, analysts or Wall Street. manageability, scalability, reliability, security, and so forth). Entrepreneurship business Cloud Computing DevOps management Wall Street'

Phoenix 175

Phoenix Software Review Technical Review Cofounder 175

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

For lessons from Matt and his Return Path management team, many of who are now execs at Bolster, you want to read Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company’s Critical Functions and Teams. I’ve worked with Matt for over 20 years and have experienced many ups and downs.

Fractional CTO 70

Fractional CTO Cofounder Startup Lead Investor 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

Designate one person in charge of managing the hackathon. The Hackathon manager should come up with an easy way to manage the team list (hint – wiki). The hackathon manager is responsible for coordinating all of this, including the mechanism for judging. Here’s how: Pick a date during the quarter for the hackathon.

Software Review 138

Software Review Wiki Continuous Deployment Agile 138

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

It includes Pantheon’s most developer loved features, their enterprise tools for managing teams and websites en masse, and lessons learned powering 85,000 Drupal and WordPress websites. Pantheon for Agencies gets everyone on the same page with a common set of management and testing tools for clients and their agencies.

Technical Review 70

Technical Review Portfolio Web Design 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2010

As a software developer, Nate had experience using other project management tools, but none of them seemed to work well for the small teams that he worked on. When we learned about kanban and understood how others were applying it to project management, we recognized that it would be a great way for small teams to visualize their work.

Founder 122

Founder Acquisition Software Developers Software Development 122

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 30, 2011

We lost a great candidate because our process was in flux and he sussed out our eng management wasn’t committed to the new way. Trada, like many of the companies we’ve invested in, had spectacular growth (both revenue, customers, and headcount) in 2011. Program with the person live.

Software Developers 136

Software Developers Software Development Startup Hiring 136

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

In the last five years, I’ve managed to find the time to write, publish and promote multiple books, including two award-winning bestsellers , develop a web application, maintain a blog, and present at conferences. Maybe you just want to kick butt in your day job. Prioritizing the Three Most Important Actions.

Technical Review 195

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Software Review Cofounder 195

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 6, 2016

Some choose to stay at Techtonic Group, where they become part of a team to build custom software, mobile applications and content-managed websites, while others move on to Techtonic Group clients. After about six months, graduating apprentices are qualified junior developers, ready to work.

Coder 70

Coder Salary Software Engineering Software 70

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

This approach worked much better, but by this point one of the co-founders was frustrated with the customer dynamics (all business facing) and decided to leave to start a new consumer-facing business (he left on good terms, we are still good friends, and he’s much happier today). The last three months have been pleasantly insane.

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

For example: CEO Friend: “Are the trials converting into customers?&#. Tags: Entrepreneurship management WHY. In his case he was experiencing the opposite of the yes/no problem – he was trying to ask an open ended question and getting a yes/no answer. CTO: “No&#. several (four?)

Software Engineering 136

Software Engineering Cloud Engineer Software 136

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2018

As a result of growing their customer base quickly, they were invited to participate in an analyst evaluation. As a result, the younger companies approaching the problem in a completely new way were ranked poorly because the analyst missed the real value to the customer. The analyst didn’t behave like a customer.

Technical Review 73

Technical Review Warrant PR Portfolio 73

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 23, 2014

Well before the web existed, I was physically tearing articles out of industry magazines and sending them to customers, prospects, other entrepreneurs, and my partner Dave, who probably got tired of the stack of paper with notes scribbled on them that landed on his desk each day.

Technical Review 154

Technical Review Angel Investor Partner Database 154

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 30, 2019

MetLife and Techstars managing director Mee-Jung Jang are defining insurtech broadly, and mental health is a key area of focus. If you’re a founder of a mental health startup, I encourage you to request office hours with managing director Mee-Jung Jang with this form and follow her on twitter to keep posted on her startup recruiting tour.

Programming 130

Programming Global Founder Search 130

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 24, 2014

Managing the emotional swings in business comes easier to me because of my experience in athletics.” The customer base is incredible. Management integrate jeremy bloom leader leadership management victim' ” The retrospective with the company was powerful. ” The core of the company is strong.

Philadelphia 185

Philadelphia Leadership Partner Management 185

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 17, 2010

I also know that everyone I invest in values any kind of feedback – both good and bad – and they work especially hard to delight their customers so any kind of feedback will make them better. Earlier today, Alan wrote an article on Standing Cloud titled Seeding the Cloud with Open Source, Standing Cloud Makes It Easy.

Open Source 94

Open Source Cloud Portfolio Technical Review 94

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2019

A new book in the Techstars Series is Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups written by Amos Schwartzfarb , the Managing Director of Techstars Austin. This process stood for WHO is your customer, WHAT are they buying, and WHY do they buy it.

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Austin Sales Venture Capital 123

Feld Thoughts

JULY 27, 2016

I know there is a lot of advice going around right now – especially in the bay area – that you should focus on your product, start getting customers (or users), make them deliriously happy, and not worry about the rest of stuff for a while. You want a doer who can manage, not a manager who will reluctantly do.

Finance 70

Finance Hiring Restful Naming 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

This new hire was a commercial hustler (code named Scott), moving quickly and broadly to try to secure customers and partners, including some of the tech industry’s largest companies. Mary had never managed somebody a decade senior to her and was struggling to manage Scott.

Boston 118

Boston LP Startup Equity 118

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 11, 2021

Through Cleantech Open, startups can build their entrepreneurship skills and professional networks, access expert mentorship, and connect with potential investors, partners, and customers. Cleantech Open is currently accepting applications for its 2021 cohort, and you can learn more and apply here by April 18.

Alabama 128

Alabama Equity Affiliate Incubator 128

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 8, 2014

I was driving up to my place in Keystone and Raj was explaining some of the customer feedback they were receiving on their initial product. Clearly there are a lot of companies that don’t want to deal with Microsoft Active Directory or manage LDAP themselves. The initial reception has been fantastic.

Cloud 134

Cloud Conversion Operations Email 134

Feld Thoughts

JULY 23, 2012

Many of Gnip ‘s customers and partners are in the bay area and they have decided to begin adding people in San Francisco to better support those clients. They’ve just posted their first position in San Francisco to help manage and grow existing customers.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Hiring Partner Customer 131

Feld Thoughts

MAY 17, 2013

The not so amazing CEO or executive immediately falls into a mode of trying to defend the person, or the team, to the outside world (board, investors, customers) and other members of the team. Management leadership management' This is normal – there’s no way you could know any of this during the interview process.

Hiring 168

Hiring Leadership Restful Management 168

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

While there’s still plenty of that in the system, many of the products and services are maturing and the particular segment Standing Cloud has gone after has suddenly become incredibly important to a large number of hosting, managed services, and cloud providers (often the same thing) not named Amazon.

Cloud 148

Cloud Java PHP Open Source 148

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011

Today they are announcing a new host-based firewall management solution in conjunction with SoftLayer – a leader in the cloud market. StillSecure has taken nearly 12 years of history and experience and have built a product from the ground-up with the cloud users’ customer experience and profile in mind.

Cloud 132

Cloud Security SMS Hosting 132

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2011

Library of Congress to manage the receipt of all historical data from Twitter and facilitate its delivery to the Library of Congress. On Monday, the company announced a much anticipated product improvement that allows existing customers to open multiple connections to Premium Twitter Feeds on their Gnip data collectors.

Partner 127

Partner Social Media Distribution Management 127

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 4, 2014

Moreover, there’s no accounting for the time value of money, the customer time required to deploy the service, or the risk of time wasted if the deployment doesn’t go well. In the rarest cases, the slide has relevant and reference-able data that a potential customer can apply to their situation. Improved response rate by 32%.

Software 140

Software Portfolio Sales Cofounder 140

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

My grandparents immigrated from Russia, Germany, and Austria – there were people in those countries trying really hard to kill them before they managed to immigrate to America. He had just heard from one of his employees who had been at a customer site for the past three days with another employee. I was furious at the customer.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley Austria Arkansas Russia 143

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2012

My long time friend Chris Moody , president and COO of Gnip, has offered to write some guest posts on management – we’ll call the series Moody on Management. Telling me how you learned to handle customer objections around price could prove to be vey useful. Ask lots of questions about stuff that matters to you.

Startup 146

Startup Matching Hiring Early Stage 146

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. I was next with a quick discussion framing why DevOps is critical to our companies and their customers.

Conversion 132

Conversion Agile Portfolio Lean 132

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 16, 2017

” I expect that this false sense of security will still exist in 2049 if humans manage to still be around. I expect every security vendor is hard at work this morning figuring out what to patch, how to do it, what to tell their customers, and how to get all the patches out in the world as fast as possible.

Security 83

Security Database Government Software 83

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 18, 2017

When you read Jeff Bezos’ annual letter and internalize “customer obsession” you realize that if you view the world from the perspective of the customer, everything in your business hinges on getting your product into their hands, and then totally delighting them.

Boston 118

Boston Lean Software Founder 118

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Like the contact management problem, the real-time communication problem is a total mess. They have a Support room for every customer that they participate in (in real-time) and drive their product based on real-time customer feedback. The headline then was One Address Book To Rule Them All.

API 140

API Email Portfolio Search 140

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2012

Although each component can have a significant impact on the overall feel of a company, the way you establish and manage the two should be different. Values establish your company’s view of the world and determine how you treat others including employees, customers, partners, and investors.

Startup 152

Startup Semantic Hiring Employee 152

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2012

I’ve managed to get in a solid four hours of writing on my Startup Communities book each day and will have a full draft to circulate to a small group of people on Saturday. So far I’m pleased with my shift to Maker Mode this summer. Yesterday I saw a post from Gnip titled You Are What You Do. That said, it’s f **g hard.

New York 136

New York Finance Metrics Email 136

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

The first are companies like Yesware that are rapidly growing revenue and customers, are in the 30 to 100 employee range, are dealing with balancing resources to accomplish their goals, but have an incredible amount of open ground in front of them. Yesware has now shifted from the startup phase to the scaling up phase.

Denver 130

Denver Portfolio Leadership Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 30, 2010

They explain this in detail in their post and end with the following: “Yes, this employee is still with us, and here’s why: when exceptions like this occur, what’s important is how we react to the crisis, accountability, and how hard we drive to quickly resolve things in the best way possible for our customers.

Web 129

Web Texas Software Employee 129