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MAY 24, 2017

Christina Sass is co-founder and COO of Andela, a company that locates, trains, and staffs world-class engineers in Africa for hire by tech companies in the US and elsewhere. The post How Andela Finds and Trains World-Class Engineers in Africa [Traction #41: Christina Sass] appeared first on NextView Ventures.

Africa 227

Africa Engineer Coder Cofounder 227

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Depending on the composition of the founding team, you might or might not have near-term holes in certain functions at the exec level – e.g. you’ll most likely need to bring on a CTO/VP of Engineering shortly after the seed round if you don’t have a technical co-founder.

Part-Time VPE 195

Part-Time VPE Seed Stage CTO Hire Forecast 195

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APRIL 21, 2016

How do you build your engineering/dev team from the ground up? Let’s make a few assumptions: You are a founder, you have your idea, and you have your money. What kind of engineers do you need? What kind of engineers do you need? Now consider a few high-level categories of engineers: Front-End. It is just you.

Engineer 149

Engineer Hiring Non-Compete Dividend 149

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DECEMBER 3, 2015

This post on how to retain tech talent was written by Dan DeMeyere, director of engineering at thredUP. NextView is an investor in thredUP, and this post originally appeared on their engineering team blog. Retaining engineering talent has become an increasingly challenging task for any engineering manager in the Bay Area.

CTO Hire 120

CTO Hire Retention Marketing Engineer 120

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OCTOBER 24, 2019

As seed rounds have atomized, it’s not uncommon for founders to raise 3 or even 4 rounds prior to a series A. The reality is that if a founder raised every one of these rounds, and lead investors always got their “target” ownership, the level of dilution would be ridiculous. Founders with limited experience. should be avoided.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

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NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. NVV: Startups are all about tradeoffs, and engineering is a great example. Making good tradeoffs is a core skill of a senior engineer.

Technology 334

Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

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SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. Instead, it’s more of a Manifesto about the core beliefs that shape our strategy. Belief #1: The best time to invest is early.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

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JULY 31, 2014

Included in our recent investments in this category are both Dunwello (rethinking how employee feedback and reviews are delivered) and a stealthy investment in NYC empowering software engineers. We of course try to look ahead at what’s next in the marketplace, but the founders we work with do a better job than we do at that.

Seed Stage 272

Seed Stage B2C Technical Review Disintermediation 272

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one? The needs of each founder are so different from the next, and the challenges his/her business faces are even more diverse.

Hiring 336

Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

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MARCH 24, 2021

Doing Reference Checks on VCs “Try to speak to at least one founder that the investor has worked with in a failed investment. The Seed VC Decision Tree “If the market is attractive and there just isn’t great founder/market fit, we will be open minded as well. This is not always easy to do. ” (Rob Go).

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

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MAY 31, 2023

For example, a 2009 study conducted by Paul Gompers and David Scharfstein, “Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship”, found that failed founders have the same chances of success¹ as novice founders, but prior success does increase the odds of future success. I reached out to a dozen founders using the criteria of: 1.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley Cofounder Term Sheet Founder 156

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FEBRUARY 16, 2016

Though, this article is not a reflection on the fundamentals of unicorns—rather, I am using them as a proxy for situations in which founders have executed on big ideas. 38 unicorns, or 1 in 4 (24%), have at least one MBA founder. 63 MBA founders are represented among the 157 unicorns. Key Insights. Shazam (GSB, Haas).

Programming 120

Programming St. Louis Cofounder India 120

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JUNE 30, 2022

Founders: Anita Broellochs & Alex Shirazi. Get to know the founders. RH: Founders, please introduce yourselves. . Anita has a background in bioprocess engineering and has been actively involved with the alternative protein space since 2017. RH: What’s your favorite thing about being an early-stage founder?

California 296

California Cofounder Germany Early Stage 296

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SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

However, we’ve found that it’s frequently the most over-engineered, and often filled with extraneous information. Yes, with Demo Day presentations Founders generally weave a story about the problem and market, and then close with something like “we are the right team to do this.” The logos are more quickly recognizable than written text.

Seed Stage 218

Seed Stage Engineer Restful Founder 218

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JULY 24, 2015

The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. On Tuesday, July 21, we hosted the first-ever Boston Consumer Tech Summit. Half our portfolio is consumer.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

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MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. Engineers and even marketers proudly claim to be “full stack.” NVV: How do you see a pretotype helping (or hurting) a founder’s ability to raise capital and scale successfully? Yes, everyone is pushing to make a dent in the universe.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

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NOVEMBER 4, 2019

One of the biggest rookie mistakes I see among founders pursuing seed rounds is that they’ve spent too much time building something vs. proving something. In most cases, the two most important things to prove early on are 1) that the founders can attract A+ talent and 2) that there are signals of market demand for their product.

Seed Stage 180

Seed Stage Bootstrapping Demand Early Stage 180

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FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. When you have extremely limited engineering resources, it’s even more critical to stay focused and clearly set your priorities. How do you think about these top company priorities?

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

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DECEMBER 10, 2014

Chief among them was an initial study done by EverTrue founder and CEO — and Harvard Business School grad — Brent Grinna. When I was a freshman, a wise mentor told me, “Pick your major based on something for which the Stanford engineering department is creating new buildings.” Buildings That Buzz.

Boston 328

Boston Seed Stage San Francisco Startup 328

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JULY 21, 2022

Founders: Ingrid Hung & Emily Persky . Get to know the founders. RH: Founders, please introduce yourselves. . RH: What’s your favorite thing about being an early-stage founder? EP: Getting to live in the mindset that everything is “figure-outable” has by far been my favorite part of being an early-stage founder.

Early Stage 156

Early Stage San Francisco Michigan Portfolio 156

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FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Given the common challenges encountered by founders as they navigate through this hiring decision, I thought I’d outline some of my thoughts below that can hopefully serve as a simple framework when it comes to making the first Analytics hire at your startup. Many founders confuse the two as they both involve lots of numbers.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

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DECEMBER 14, 2016

NYTech does not mirror the diversity of its host city… Today on Gotham Alpha, I talk to Alex Qin, Skillshare engineer and founder of Code Cooperative, about the reality of New York Tech’s diversity gap…what factors actually reinforce hiring prejudice here…and how we can all start to fix this problem, right now.

New York 120

New York Hosting Channel Engineer 120

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JANUARY 23, 2017

They talk about what business development roles actually do for their companies, and when and why a founder would hire someone to lead up the function. This is a deep, nuanced exploration of a job role that doesn’t often fit as neatly into departmental categories as engineering, product, sales, or marketing.

Hiring 120

Hiring Developer Startup Channel 120

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MAY 2, 2019

I wrote about this in this post on After Organic as well as in our interview with the founders of WildType about engineered fish protein. This democratization is happening in the workplace, and we want to partner with founders who are looking to enable greater access and opportunity for everyone.

B2B 120

B2B Portfolio Software Community 120

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OCTOBER 29, 2015

Past episodes include stories from founders of LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , Mattermark , InsightSquared , and more. In this episode, we talk to Gabriel Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of the search engine Duck Duck Go and author of the book, Traction , now in its second edition.

Framework 120

Framework Cofounder Startup Channel 120

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JUNE 5, 2018

We launched the Hiring Bootcamp to equip portfolio founders and hiring managers with the best practices around building a hiring machine , so they can maximize their chances of getting the best talent into the door efficiently. no one wants to be the first female engineer joining a 15-person all male-engineering team.

Hiring 120

Hiring Portfolio Metrics B2C 120

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APRIL 16, 2015

Often, when I speak to very early-stage founders, the conversation around value focuses on achievements. These might include: Bring on a technical co-founder. This is especially true for less experienced founders. Get a working version of the product. Get three paying customers. Launch a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Cofounder Early Stage Startup 120

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FEBRUARY 18, 2016

In fact, there’s a glow among the Twitterati that alignment between founders and investors is getting back to normal. Startup salaries — especially on the engineering side — are at near record highs. publicly and privately lament “my portfolio is hurting…” Mark Suster over at Upfront has a great deck on this. This surprises nobody.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup Valuation 120

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APRIL 7, 2015

Whether it’s rational or not, it’s really hard to convince an investor that the founders will be great at creating wonderful products if the materials and web presence they put in front of them fall flat. Dirty Secret #2: Feedback from VCs usually sucks (despite how often founders seek it out). Again, that’s the norm.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Founder Later Stage Engineer 120

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MARCH 15, 2016

As a result, I listen to a lot of podcasts and interviews with founders—but there’s one thing about them that drives me absolutely insane. Founders are all typically asked about their growth and the key to their success. What things did they do to gain initial traction? Forget about that.

Customer 174

Customer Startup Email Channel 174

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JANUARY 11, 2018

Through all of those posts, we’ve received one common question from founders: Are all Everyday Economy startups consumer-facing? In our portfolio, Code Climate is a perfect example of this, as its software becomes embedded within an engineering team’s daily workflow. The answer is no.

B2B 120

B2B B2C Vertical Portfolio 120

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OCTOBER 7, 2015

You might be able to build a reasonably successful business by spotting a hole in some market somewhere, but it’s much more likely that outlandish success will be won by founders (and, really, people ) who are authentically interested in solving a problem. Maybe you struggled with something in a former job or as a consumer.

Search 120

Search B2B Artificial Inteligence Semantic 120

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OCTOBER 7, 2015

You might be able to build a reasonably successful business by spotting a hole in some market somewhere, but it’s much more likely that outlandish success will be won by founders (and, really, people ) who are authentically interested in solving a problem. Maybe you struggled with something in a former job or as a consumer.

Search 120

Search B2B Artificial Inteligence Semantic 120

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MARCH 10, 2015

Ahmed is a former Googler and the current founder of Nani. While we had BR engineers building the APIs that power the app and designers creating the look and feel, we didn’t have any mobile app developers in-house to put the pieces together and make a beautiful user experience.

Mobile 120

Mobile San Francisco Curation Seed Stage 120

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NOVEMBER 17, 2016

If you look at historically, when people built the first cars over 100 years ago, there were no companies that made engines and components and whatever. But right now is a big opportunity for both investors and founders. It’s like the size of a city.

Startup 120

Startup Vertical Seed Stage United States 120