YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. Most early stage startups tend to do well in this area because entrepreneurs generally launch their startups believing they have a great product idea. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 127

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. Most early stage startups tend to do well in this area because entrepreneurs generally launch their startups believing they have a great product idea. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. Engineering is critical but it is not everything. Don’t hire a homogenous team. Don’t listen to VCs who tell you to bring in the big guns early. If they join super early it is often a disaster.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Eric Friedman

JULY 19, 2019

Many early stage investors look for financial models for 3+ years from founders to make an investment. I can’t remember an early stage team putting together a model that has been accurate for 3 years. In fact, for early stage companies you are usually wildly wrong.

Early Stage 114

Early Stage Startup Framework Revenue 114

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

per engineer.” Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. Those who do, often believe they can hire from the open market without the hassle of an acquisition.

Early Stage 117

Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 117

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

None of that can compare with being the CEO of a startup facing a rapidly diminishing bank account, your best engineer quitting, working until 10pm and rushing to the airport and catching a redeye for a “ Hail Mary ” close of a customer, with your board demanding you do it faster. How to Become a VC. The feedback varied from: “.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Being able to hire talented professionals remains a difficult proposition in the current job market, especially when sourcing experienced developers, designers, and project managers. Today’s Talented Engineers & Designers Need Top-Shelf Tools of the Trade. Build a Talented Team of Technology and Business Professionals.

Incubator 188

Incubator Startup Software Developers Software Development 188

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 10, 2012

And it made me come to a new realization: Every early-stage web/mobile/online startup should have at least one technical advisor, probably two. Most early-stage, in-house teams needs to be hands on developers, not strategic. Another avenue is looking for CTOs/VP Engineering via LinkedIn.

Technical Review 332

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review 332

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 28, 2020

To begin again, to start anew, to have a fresh, blank slate — the corporate advantages of hiring entry level employees, strong professionals at their career beginnings, seem self-explanatory. In any economy, successful entry-level hiring is a crucial aspect of corporate success. Onboarding at the entry level can be resource intensive.

Hiring 264

Hiring Early Stage Non-Compete Salary 264

techcrunch.com

AUGUST 12, 2012

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. Data Collective has already made 46 investments from its first fund, which it calls “comparable with other seed and early stage funds” (Ocko and Bogue wouldn’t reveal fund size.). Headphones. CrunchBase.

Early Stage 70

Early Stage San Francisco Los Angeles Southern California 70

Eric Friedman

MAY 1, 2023

Then about two years ago, I reunited with one of the smartest CTOs I know and we began connecting our old engineer network with early stage companies that needed to ship faster. Putting engineers into companies that need them is an incredible feeling. Its been empowering, exhilarating, and humbling.

Technical Review 117

Technical Review Engineer Early Stage Operations 117

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As a startup in this phase you often raise capital, get press, hire staff and everything feels possible. As an early-stage VC I love this phase. what your product & engineering thought they cared about and you adapt your offering. and we were met with weak demand, slow growth and high costs.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 20, 2019

Over the years, the Truss team has worked with several early-stage startups, and noticed a consistency in inter-series problems (regardless of the industry). For example, we worked with a company and observed that each release required eleven engineers. Series B: Hiring and Developing Managers.

Technical Cofounder 113

Technical Cofounder Burn Rate Seed Stage Cofounder 113

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 27, 2022

Once your startup begins to grow, you might want to hire a professional with more experience in finances to focus on this part of your business. Running a business will likely mean simultaneously juggling between different projects, especially during the early stages. Project planning. Leadership skills.

Startup 110

Startup Australia Web Development Forecast 110

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

While the rewards may be a boon to their company in the short term, the consequences of accepting outside funding too early can be debilitating. There’s a reason why I refer to early-stage VC funding as vulture capital, and to be honest it’s pretty accurate. Just because you can afford to hire, doesn’t mean that you should.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). Very few of them are started, in my experience, by sales people and very few early stage companies really understand sales. More on that later. The difference is PROCESS ORIENTATION.

Early Stage 350

Early Stage Startup Sales Campaign 350

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

Founders seem to disproportionately come from engineering, product and sales/business unit career paths. Seed Stage Startups Don’t Hire Fulltime For These Roles, And Certainly Not Senior Hires. Hiring Marketing or Comms Consultants/Agencies At Seed Is Often a Terrible Idea. Nor Do VCs.

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 5, 2017

They had designed a technical hiring process to try and eliminate gender bias but were losing all the women midway through their funnel when a take-home project was introduced. Was there something about this step that was unintentionally sending the wrong signal to female engineers? What was going wrong?

Technical Review 58

Technical Review Hiring Software Review Engineer 58

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

Experienced leadership, well-funded, and hiring in engineering, product and operations. Salonpas patches for back pain because I’m old, Andytown coffee and this GQ article about a band of watch thieves. Highlighted Homebrew Portfolio Jobs. Orum is a NYC-based financial technology company that makes money move fast.

Early Stage 146

Early Stage Seed Stage Startup Software 146

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 3, 2021

The post discusses how engineers need long periods of dedicated time to build and managers (or people whose work generally involves lots of meetings) can honor this by not scheduling interruptions in the middle of these periods. They’re hiring lots of folks across engineering, product, design, marketing, sales and such!

Early Stage 145

Early Stage Management Startup Portfolio 145

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

Organizational debt is all the people/culture compromises made to “just get it done” in the early stages of a startup. While he kept bringing the conversation back to their big valuation I tried to steer the conversation back to how they were going to deal with: training the influx of new hires – in both culture and job specific tasks.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent. Often I’m asked by startup CEO’s about how to best build an engineering team. You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be. Raising Venture Capital. Angel Topics.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

The Startup Magazine

MAY 22, 2018

Don’t let your engineers find workarounds that will be fixed again later on. Early stage. At this stage, the hiring of employees who are customer focused is paramount. New hires will be part-time and will be dedicated to helping customers. What fast growing startups should do.

Customer 81

Customer Early Stage Churn Rate Startup 81

SoCal CTO

APRIL 18, 2012

Or they are looking at Hiring a CTO and want to see what salary and equity ranges look like. You then make selections around aspects like Founder Status, Job Title, Headcount, Revenue, Development Stage, Capital Raised, Funding Round, etc. Well the easiest visualization to use is to go to the Benchmarks Tab. It has not.

CTO Hire 294

CTO Hire Salary Equity Los Angeles 294

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

Hire the wrong people. Bad hiring decisions are often a symptom of premature scaling. Why hire a sales team when you have nothing to sell yet? That sounds absurd, but founders convince themselves that they’ve hired the right people at the right moment. Be trigger shy about hiring. Honestly, we don’t know.”?

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) Lessons Learned.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2020

Our families — and the families of the employees we eventually hire—come first. Yet, especially in the early stages of your business, you will have to drive the whole of that process. Along the way, that may mean more financial freedom, fame, and even luxury, but those are pleasant bonuses rather than goals themselves.

Entrepreneur 205

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Silicon Valley Bandwidth 205

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

I recently wrote a post about why I didn’t think early-stage startups should have COOs. One great solution I see is to hire an outstanding CFO who runs both. Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. .

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

While platforms like Instagram offer a great starting point, the key to differentiation lies in the age-old strategy of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 6- Hire an attorney and SEO expert Photo Credit: Priscilla Christine When establishing your business, there are several essential tips to keep in mind for long-term success.

eCommerce 133

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 133

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

I encourage you to read that section if you’re wondering about hiring a CRO, but all of the hiring of sales reps and (possibly) a sales manager happens during what Anita calls the “White Board” stage as you’re beginning to transition to “Selling with PowerPoint.”. You can find this post on the Bolster blog here ).

Revenue 62

Revenue Hiring Forecast Early Stage 62

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be. That’s why Roger Smith puts the focus of the CTO on programming for the earliest stage.

CTO 225

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 225

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. For a well-funded seed company I have controversially recommended hiring a great office manager that doubles as an administrative assistant.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

Once your business starts generating enough revenue, you can hire a marketing agency or consultant to handle the task. To get your new business on a solid footing at an early stage, your online marketing strategy needs to be supported by the twin pillars of content and social.

Dividend 113

Dividend Early Stage Social Media Hosting 113

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 8, 2021

You can hire more salespeople and practice social selling. . There are countless strategies to consider employing here, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and even traditional advertising are all viable options. . But what if you want to grow more or grow faster? Memorability.

Startup 127

Startup Retention Acquisition Agile 127

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

As an early stage investor in the world of gaming and metaverse technology at Remagine Ventures, I find these companies have the potential to set the agenda, become the potential platforms for developers building in this space and future acquirers/consolidators of startups building the next generation of the Internet.

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

blog.wepay.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

» 6 Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup By Rich Aberman Despite the obvious look of shock and panic on the faces of my WePay teammates, I recently committed my first lines of production code. Non-engineers are not “designers” by default. So, without further ado, what I’ve learned: Don’t be Helpless.

Engineer 53

Engineer Software Review Web Technical Review 53