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

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 28, 2014

We particularly like this post, Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good? , In order to ensure completeness, I find it useful to include criteria from the following sub-divisions when hiring executives: Will the executive be world class at running the function? Melissa Bell, Vox.com.

Part-Time VPE 160

Part-Time VPE Sales Lean Cofounder 160

Cracking the Code

MAY 2, 2019

Recruiting and retaining top talent is even more challenging for software engineers. To get an insight into how successful start-ups approach team building, we spoke to Sylvain Utard, employee number 1 and VP of Engineering at Algolia, an Accel portfolio company. We asked Sylvain to share his secret tips with us.

Part-Time VPE 48

Part-Time VPE Engineer Retention API 48

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

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 16, 2016

Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Let’s focus on “ recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company.” ” This is where the vexing part comes in. Now, consider a VP Engineering who has never worked in a company smaller than 5,000 people.

Part-Time VPE 70

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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

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A chief technology officer (CTO) is a C-suite executive who is focused on scientific and technological issues including web applications, mobile applications, electronic and digital media development. A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring.

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YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 8, 2011

If you’re looking for a space, simply type in an address and find available spaces around it. The founders started working in a basement from May this year, putting together mockups and building the site with an off-shore development team. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager.

Part-Time VPE 223

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Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. A bonafide team is the assurance that the idea can be executed and that the business can scale when the time is right. Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Don’t make everyone a founder.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

In the early days of Rocket Science I realized that we needed high-level advice on multiple fronts; technology, game development, video game distribution, etc. One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems.

Advisory Board 260

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 14, 2013

Today's post is brought to you by my friend, Paul Blumenfeld , a recruiter who is one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to hiring processes. Many hiring managers write a job spec that is heavy on wishes and low on real needs. I see two reasons for this discrepancy: Static Specs. Short and Sweet.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Matching Hiring 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

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socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The first part is the hardest part: hunting for a programmer. If you have a friend who is a recruiter then ask them to tell you what they recommend that will not cost anything. This means considering what the opportunity cost for working on a high risk venture is relative to other things they can spend their time on.

Part-Time VPE 41

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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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

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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.

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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’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

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. He was a fellow Harvard computer science graduate and I was looking for a summer job in software development and found him through an alumni directory. and EBITDA margins are 47%.

Part-Time VPE 54

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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

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Product and Engineering. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Product and Engineering. Management and Company Building. -->. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Ian Langworth started his career as an O’Reilly author and software engineer at Google. Plusstartup.

CTO Hire 52

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rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

He or she might call himself a “consulting CTO,&# “freelance CTO,&# “on-demand CTO,&# “CTO on call,&# “CTO for hire,&# or just a “technology strategy advisor.&# If you find him, he’s gold, and not only because of his knowledge and experience.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! Or, rather, more offensively to Facebook and Google employees, less offensive to.NET developers, though the underlying message is the same.). As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. Expensify Blog. Some additional comments at the end.

Java 107

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devver.wordpress.com

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

The Devver Blog A Boulder startup improving the way developers work. 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. Becoming the CTO vs VP of engineering?

CTO Hire 40

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Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

The challenge for the other founder is that as a startup evolves from “the jungle” (super early stages, chaotic organization, prior to achieving product-market fit) to the “dirt road” (developing some organizational maturity and initial product market fit), senior functional executives often get hired from the outside to take over departments.

Cofounder 45

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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.

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Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47