Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. I used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use. It was humbling.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

I’ve had this conversation with several communities such as in San Diego where I believe there are way more qualified and talented engineers than available local capital to support them. It’s a very smartly designed debenture program. What can you do to attract high-quality engineers who want something more?

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Beyond that he (and thus engineering) could simply tell me, “No.” Here is where I see this really play out: Product Management. I did this. ” Those were the rules.

Startup 150

Startup CTO Hire Sales Leadership 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

VC has operated as an “old boys club”, with access to capital often requiring entrance through an elite university engineering department in one of two cities. We also saw that the same types of entrepreneurs were repeatedly getting funded.

Los Angeles 343

Los Angeles Las Vegas San Francisco Baltimore 343

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 5, 2010

They walked through 4 minutes of PowerPoint garble (of a 5 minute pitch) before unveiling a beautifully designed UI. The two most ambitious projects were ThereNow and IQ Engines. Jason let them run over their time slot by a long time – the demo was worth seeing and he obviously knew this.

San Francisco 254

San Francisco Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review 254

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

He came to the United States in 2001 to study Software Engineering at Auburn University. In 2005 he was graduated and took a job in South Carolina working for technology company while he started his own web design company on the side. I hope that didn’t have a stature of limitation! Felipe grew up in Brazil. Irony, hey?).

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Canada Green South Carolina 282

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I started as a programmer, and then a database designer, and then a project manager, and I led conversion teams. They paid engineers $4,000 more entry-point. By the way, the salary, which was a good salary, was $27,000 entry salary, and engineers were paid $31,000 to $35,000. [00:10:30] Engineering vs. non-engineering. [00:10:32]

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

He explained how users at the time were encountering “social engineering threats” rather than “technical threats” and that his company took an “East Coast” approach to the problem as they built an automated system that rated websites. Such that during that time, Chris “learned how to learn.”.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Cofounder API 281

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

See we have JPL that designed the rockets that put men on the moon in the first place and Caltech, one of the two most prestigious engineering universities in the country. And I constantly have to remind people that the largest tech startup employer in LA is actually SpaceX and that, yes, Elon Musk does live in LA.

Los Angeles 321

Los Angeles Portfolio Hosting Media 321

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

There’s an old joke in software development, “How much time does it take to design software?” ” Answer: As long as you have scheduled for the design phase. Design with no constraints becomes a research project. Not funny, “ha, ha” but pretty apropos.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

I think it’s a beautifully designed product that is also tremendously useful and focused. We only have 5 engineers, how can we do all that? I know that many third-party apps are stepping in to do much of this … but that’s the point. It’s a hole that isn’t filled by the initial applications. Come on, Mark.

Mobile 334

Mobile Web Software Review San Francisco 334

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

They bought distribution and engineering talent. Quirky - Platform facilitating collaborative design of consumer products through an online community. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. No big surprise. Good deal for all.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In addition to Seth, the core team he pulled together consisted of Elaine, a product person with front-end engineering skills and sharp design sense, and Sandy a back-end server engineer. Talk about the Meebo team and early Meebo experiences.

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 25, 2011

Maker Studios is dedicated to working with “talent” in the same way that Silicon Valley is dedicated to working with engineers. Our talent includes writers, directors, actors, singers, post-production professionals, costume designers, lighting professionals, sound mixers, show runners and so on.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

I was 23 and had been programming computers, designing computer networks and selling software for 10 years. My colleagues that graduated with engineering degrees from UCSD were paid $31,000 – 15% more. I struggled to get the group to take me – they only took engineers. She WAS an engineer and plenty technical.

Marketing 385

Marketing Europe Engineer Networking 385

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

Founded in January 2010 by Stephen Hood (ex-Delicious head of product), Dave Baggeroer (Stanford’s Institute of Design), and Josh Whiting (ex-senior engineer at Delicious and Craigslist). Pricing engine helps publishers ascertain ad inventory pricing by analyzing ad transaction data from the market/exchanges. MetaMarkets.

Founder 214

Founder San Diego SMS Los Angeles 214

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2018

He went to college to study art and design. He looked at Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Vogue, etc. He decided to recreate the scenes from these beautiful design photos and he added back the immigrant Latinos who are so responsible for the privileged lives we lead. He started living out of his car?—?too From Los Angeles.

Los Angeles 174

Los Angeles Mexico United States South America 174

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

While you dialed AOL to get on the Internet, the goal of AOL was to keep you locked into their proprietary content and thus earned the classification of “walled garden.&# They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc.

Social Network 297

Social Network Networking Internet EC2 297

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Huge structural under-employment in much of the country and full employment in some niche tech markets where it’s impossible to hire developers, designers or sales professionals. For others it feels like a two-speed economy, where rules apply to hot tech startups that don’t apply elsewhere. You know what I’m talking about.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

Creative – we’re a place of writers, directors, producers, musicians, costume designers, make-up artists, graphic artists, 3D modelers. A market leader in content, music, entertainment, textiles, engineering, aerospace and trade. They designed the next gen UI for the film The Minority Report. downtown LA].

Community 304

Community Los Angeles Startup Silicon Valley 304

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

But if you’re in a competitive space where you want to get a little more engineering done before the world is ready to start researching you then you may choose to delay. So in my opinion you should design your funding story to get wide distribution. But that’s not the world we live in today. They seldom scoop fundings.

Startup 355

Startup PR Dividend Merger 355

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2017

It is literally the gateway to the United States or as Mayor Garcetti points out we are “the capital of the pacific rim” We are the only city in America with 3 of the top 25 universities in the country and we graduate more engineers now in LA than anywhere else in the country.

IPO 191

IPO Los Angeles South Korea Armenia 191

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Examples of VC platform services include: recruiting, marketing, design support, inside sales reps, consulting, accounting services and so forth. Other firms like Google bring massive resources to design or engineering and as as corporate VC can offer things normal VC firms can’t offer.

Portfolio 150

Portfolio PR Partner Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I took an advanced computer course in high school where I learned to build databases in Ashton Tate’s dBase III+ and to compile my designs using a product called Clipper. I took a job in corporate finance as an intern my junior year at First Interstate Bank and I did system design on the side, as my main job was corporate planning.

NPV 337

NPV Chicago Balance Sheet Database 337

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

There is nothing wrong with non-founders – by design they are the overwhelming majority of companies. People design their products in a box assuming that they’ll show customers later and get feedback. It you have a great software engineer that’s awesome. The world is much safer for non-founders.

Founder Vesting 365

Founder Vesting Intellectual Property Stock Options IP 365

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

When I was reading the Fab.com website I noticed that the CEO refers to Fab’s “one thing” as being design. They’re the place focused on design. They think design wins. And the great monetization engines of the Internet were built in LA – Overture (AdWords) & Applied Semantics (AdSense).

Developer 366

Developer Silicon Valley PR Las Vegas 366

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

In Chris Dixon’s words, it wasn’t designed for normals. App is one step forward, two steps back – In 1999 I launched my first company, BuildOnline, a SaaS-based (back then we were ASP’s) content management platform for large-scale engineering and construction projects. It was slow. It was hard to use.

Flash 326

Flash Mobile Application Development Cloud 326

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

They had worked together as senior product manager and senior engineering leads at Twitter and identified a problem they saw in visual communication of information. Projector gives you dedicated space for real-time collaborative notes with colleagues on both logic and design, all in the same tool.

Cofounder 191

Cofounder Social Media Startup Video 191

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2016

When we were acquired by Disney we had a product & engineering team of 55 people. It requires too many creative skills including writers, actors, special effects, set designers, sound engineers, editors, make-up artists, costume designers, graphic artists and on and on, which is why LA has become such a hub for online video.

Aggregator 150

Aggregator Silicon Valley Distribution Video 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 28, 2011

5 engineers. I’m looking to back technology companies so I naturally have this bias and I care deeply about product design, the ability of the team to have a good sense of what is working on the Internet & mobile and thus to make the necessary changes in the market as market conditions change. Nothing else.

Hiring 325

Hiring Early Stage Valuation Engineer 325

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

The basic components are obvious: talented founders, great engineers, angel money, venture capital, access to larger corporates (for business, funding & talent), great education / research (for IP breakthroughs) and a sufficient ecosystem of mentors, advisors, executive coaches and mavens. Welcome to the future.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Kansas City Startup Venture Capital 390

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc. MySpace was: scantily dressed, teenaged, middle-America, design chaos and on ad steroids. Facebook was everything that MySpace wasn’t. This is an awesome trend and will further lower the cost of startup development.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 16, 2016

One of the first investments I did in computer vision was Osmo, a product designed to get children off of the couch and to stop starting into an iPad and instead get them using physical objects (and other people!) The CTO, Tor Ivry , heads engineering out of Israel.

Jordan 150

Jordan CTO Hire Cofounder 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2012

And costume & set designers. And sound engineers. It’s becoming harder to distinguish tech companies from media companies. Many “tech companies” now have green screens. And make-up artists. And post production. And writers! And even … yes … actors.

San Francisco 313

San Francisco Technology Los Angeles Incubator 313

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

It’s a sexy title when you can’t design products, program computers or sell! You need to go beyond their biz dev person and get to know actual sales reps, sales engineers and professional services staff. You need channel resources – Most tech companies realize that they need Biz Dev resources to get lots of deals.

Channel 293

Channel Startup Sales Partner 293

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Joel doesn’t think he could design software for something in which he doesn’t have expertise. Mark: Google had trouble dealing with customers and contracts because they historically were so engineering driven. Engineers don’t blame salespeople for making them work weekends to help them hit their quota.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software St. Louis API 285

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

The conversations bleed into the sales messages the next time, they wend their way into software designs and form the plan of attach against competition. But where I make exceptions I expect the VP Engineering and the Chief Architect to all be located in the home office. And from all the office chatter come norms and beliefs.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Bulgaria 335