Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

Clearly the founders and senior executives of a company are the most valuable resources and their time should be maximized on the most valuable tasks. I watched Ophir Tanz achieve much in his early days at the Founder & CEO at GumGum, which has now become quite a large business. I have written about the next phases many times.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 11, 2021

The funding will be used to further invest in hiring remote workers, with an emphasis on the greater Austin and San Francisco areas due to Honor’s existing office footprints, and to expand Honor’s groundbreaking operations and technology capabilities across the Home Instead network, which has three offices in the greater Austin area.

Technical Review 62

Technical Review Engineer Finance Technology 62

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 310

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 6, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan On August 20, Eric will sit down with developer and Hut8Labs co-founder Dan Milstein for a webcast you can join to discuss “Getting Engineers Into the Lean Startup Cycle.” This conversation will be a great opportunity for engineers and engineering managers to learn more about implementing Lean Startup ideas.

Lean 167

Lean Engineer Startup Cofounder 167

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Industry-specific domain experience becomes critical when identifying operational pain points ripe for transformation. This outside work provides a valuable source of revenue able to be used to fund operations. This provides both valuable experience and an understanding of the operational issues within each sector.

Incubator 188

Incubator Startup Software Developers Software Development 188

Cracking the Code

MAY 2, 2019

Team building is top of mind for any start-up founder or exec. 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.

Part-Time VPE 48

Part-Time VPE Engineer Retention API 48

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Building an Advisory Board In my travels outside the building I kept my eyes out for articulate and visionary scientists and engineers who had expertise we lacked, and were willing to help in an advisory capacity. I chose to hire engineers from within each of our target markets and set up “Steve’s one month MBA course for engineers.”

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

But have you ever had the opportunity to pick the brains of founders who created amazingly successful startups and companies like Envato , Backblaze , Simple , or Treehouse ? Few people like talking about their mistakes, but thankfully nine founders took some time to share some of their hard-earned knowledge with you. Find your niche.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

View from Seed

APRIL 21, 2015

On the heels of our research on HBS entrepreneurs , NextView’s Dimitri Dadiomov (HBS ’15) interviewed several top founders on the early stages of their companies. Matt Prince , Co-Founder and CEO, CloudFlare (Web performance and security to protect and accelerate websites; $72.1 On Launching and Finding Early Traction.

Founder 120

Founder Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Eric Friedman

MAY 1, 2023

This happens in the form of operating, coaching, investing, and now helping them grow their own fractional consulting practice with the launch of GoFractional.com. For the last 4 years I have been a Fractional COO – building a practice of business operating excellence for clients. Its been empowering, exhilarating, and humbling.

Technical Review 117

Technical Review Engineer Early Stage Operations 117

View from Seed

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. The “product roadmap”.

Part-Time VPE 195

Part-Time VPE Seed Stage CTO Hire Forecast 195

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. They talk to customers, operations, sales, marketing and engineering to determine the company product roadmap. Engineering? And then there’s product management.

CTO Hire 385

CTO Hire Entrepreneur Technical Review Leadership 385

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. Team Neurosmart – Optimizing Performance of Special Operators. Team Salus – Patching Operational Systems to Keep them Secure. Stay tuned.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

That year, as management tried to coordinate all the operating details across all the divisions, the company almost went bankrupt when poor planning led to excess inventory, with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash. If you’re following Tesla, you might be interested to know that Sloan wasn’t the founder of GM.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

View from Seed

APRIL 27, 2020

Founders do not have this luxury. Most founders are going through hell right now, and that is not going away any time soon. For investors and founders, the next several years are going to be very different. Pre-seeds will be tougher as investors gravitate more towards proven founders or folks within their existing networks.

Cofounder 194

Cofounder Software Review Portfolio Technical Review 194

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

Today we’re excited to share the official launch of Replay , a browser that records all of the context that developers and engineers need to fix bugs faster. The need for Replay is pretty obvious; every developer/engineer spends countless hours debugging their code. But now, when an engineer gets stuck, they can share a replay.

CTO Hire 78

CTO Hire Web Cofounder Software Engineering 78

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2014

Nearly 10 years ago, Excite founder Joe Kraus, now an investor at Google Ventures, declared “there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.” So, too, is the level of competence required to engineer a product. In other words, even an engineering nobody can start a company. No Problem! Storage was expensive.

Engineer 60

Engineer Database Open Source Acquisition 60

Up and Running

AUGUST 30, 2021

Entrepreneurs have to get really comfortable with rejection, especially as a first-time founder. This is what most founders do. The important thing is to gain experience with how fast-paced companies operate, the relationships you need to be successful, and all the different hats you’ll have to wear. Solve the rest later.

Entrepreneur 132

Entrepreneur Lean Colorado Engineer 132

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Which engineers dialed it in before a big release because it was during July 4th weekend? ” Who cut you in on their bonus because even though you’re “just an sales engineer” they know you really deserved more credit for this deal. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 13, 2020

by Simone Semprini, CEO & Co-Founder, TourScanner. The global lockdown, due to the pandemic, has forced companies to digitize their operations. A few months after the world discovered the first Coronavirus case in China, a general lockdown has completely changed the lives of billions of people. Remote working and remote meetings.

Technical Review 278

Technical Review United States China Cofounder 278

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. Waiting until you have something to sell before bringing on a sales and operations staff. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic is a long term visionary of our online future and the Metaverse. Tim Sweeney, Epic Games’ founder and CEO. The largest and most popular 3D engine has big plans for the Metaverse. monthly active end-users who are engaging with content created or operated by Unity solutions in 2020.

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

The story starts with a company you probably never heard of – Engineering Research Associates. While it seemed like a good idea and had the Navy’s backing, the founders got turned down for funding by companies, investment bankers and everyone, until they talked to John Parker. Why Minneapolis/St. Parker agreed to invest.

Minnesota 281

Minnesota Engineer Minneapolis Silicon Valley 281

YoungUpstarts

JULY 25, 2019

by Rick Mac Gillis , founder and CEO of Dragon Cloud , author of “ The New Frontier In Web Api Programming “ Startups, more than any other type of business, are sensitive to change. The easiest way to do this is to open and operate multiple accounts on multiple service providers. Because startups are fragile and fledgling.

Hiring 104

Hiring Software Review Startup API 104

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2018

by Humberto Farias, CEO and co-founder at Concepta. The problem, is historically, the investment in time and resources required for traditional digital solutions can feel out of reach, and the type of programs used by corporations aren’t practical for SMBs for daily operations like reporting, inventory, or accounting. Automation.

Artificial Inteligence 143

Artificial Inteligence Analytics SCRUM Cofounder 143

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. All of this is part of the “market-engineering” that must be performed alongside product-engineering. We advise founders and teams to build systems and processes with the right foundation early.

Framework 118

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 118

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 4, 2017

Operating executive, entrepreneur and investor Varsha Rao is a good example of someone who has seen both sides of this situation. Varsha not only invests but also provides operating and strategic advice based on her experiences as a former founder and operating executive. Varsha Rao. Mark Andreessen. Sam Decker.

Angel Investor 185

Angel Investor Entrepreneur Software Engineering Operations 185

View from Seed

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Running a company is distinctly different from simply having operating experience – (working in bus dev, sales or marketing.) Board skills (Startup coaching, mentoring, strategy, operational/growth). venture/operating partners to get them into new industries. Fund raising skills. associates and put them on a long career path.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I worked with engineering to try to find product/market fit ( big endian or little endian ?) and get the chip designed into companies building engineering workstations – powerful personal computers, all while trying to refine how to find the right markets, customers, and sales process. Declare them cultural co-founders.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Engineering is critical but it is not everything. Equally – a great VP Finance can be leveraged well to take on finance, legal, HR and much of the operational tasks.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

We give abundant advice to founders about how to make startups succeed yet we offer few models about dealing with failure. 90 days later, I found out our games are terrible, no one is buying them, our best engineers started leaving, and with 120 people and a huge burn rate, we’re running out of money and about to crash. So here’s mine.

Redemption 330

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 330

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Startup founders counting the days until break-even or actively seeking outside capital must focus on streamlining their development cycles. Array your development operation in pursuit of a simple proposition: efficiently bringing a minimum viable product to market. They quite literally can’t afford to wait.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. All of this is part of the “market-engineering” that must be performed alongside product-engineering. We advise founders and teams to build systems and processes with the right foundation early.

Framework 104

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 104

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the unsung hero of many start-ups: the other founder. A lot has been written about the founder/CEO and her growth and evolution as a company grows. Larry Page is the other founder. The other founder usually begins with a particular range of responsibilities that comliment the founder.

Cofounder 45

Cofounder Founder Part-Time VPE Portfolio 45