Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

But not anal if one founder who shares equity graciously with early employees who are treated as “co-founders” My idea startup team is heaving on tech personnel but also has strong product management. Engineering is critical but it is not everything. Have them manage their area. For the wrong reasons.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

In a way it seems the model has been bring in professional management to help a company through a growth spurt while technical founders focus on becoming an industry leader in terms of innovation and then when the less experienced technical founder is ready they step back in the role.

Founder 309

Founder CTO Hire Silicon Valley Leadership 309

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FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Here is where I see this really play out: Product Management. 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.” Senior management feels undermined. I did this.

Startup 150

Startup CTO Hire Sales Leadership 150

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MAY 7, 2013

But the founders also recognized – as many great founders do – that they were going to have to build out an experienced management team to become the billion company everybody believes this can be. Babe Ruth vs. Lance Armstrong. The first move was to bring in digital media veteran Courtney Holt as COO.

Video 320

Video Los Angeles Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 320

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OCTOBER 8, 2014

The monetization engine of the Internet that powers the most profitable business perhaps in history was invented and perfected in Los Angeles and is what you now know as Google Ad Words. It may surprise you to learn that LA graduates more engineers than anywhere else in the country. Where do all of these engineers end up?

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

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MARCH 21, 2013

Often your sales engineers can do the customizations without bugging the core eng team. PS Business Cannot Become a Management Distraction. Another rule I outline with our portfolio companies who sell enterprise solutions is that I don’t want them to become a distraction for management.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software IP Technical Review 321

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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. For every Overture or MySpace in LA you had the next tier of management who made a little bit of money and is now looking to build something massive.

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378

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JANUARY 6, 2014

The main thing you’re concerned about in this phase of your company is maintaing control of your board, which in a legalistic perspective is ensuring that founders & management have the majority of seats on the board. how to evolve our management team. We have also built out an amazing management team.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

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NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Great product managers who are not great business people still often fail. Don’t know the running rate for engineers? I won’t need to hire many engineers or customer support staff. They are the most important document you can prepare to align your management team on where you THINK your business will go.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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NOVEMBER 1, 2009

They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when. The first application they ever launched was in the property management space. But they went one step further.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

I will soon announce a few fundings (not yet closed, sorry) and I’m beginning to help them think about how to ramp up their engineering teams. That’s only five deep connections to manage per year. I then traded emails with two former senior tech professionals in LA. You have to select carefully.

Networking 366

Networking CTO Hire Technical Review Email 366

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JANUARY 4, 2014

I think as a tech industry we have bred a culture that places more emphasis on product excellence than managing human behavior. Of course it makes no sense to have great people management and a crappy product. He wanted more ability to push the product & engineering teams harder – he was, after all, the CEO.

Founder 340

Founder Sacramento Cofounder Technical Review 340

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). These people take directions well from a sales manager on how to approach sales campaigns. I think I made a pretty good CEO but I know I would be lousy sales manager.

Early Stage 350

Early Stage Startup Sales Campaign 350

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FEBRUARY 18, 2019

When I was young I thought management was about distribution/delegation of responsibilities.  —  @mwseibel People talk about 10x engineers a lot (and they should - they are extremely valuable). That is truly an amazing skill and much more rare than a 10x engineer.

Leadership 264

Leadership Distribution Engineer Management 264

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APRIL 13, 2011

Product Management – Brad and Mark discuss the role of Product Managers in Startups. One (thing) we have talked about in the past is a lack of Product Managers, experienced technology Product Managers. (in So I think the hardest role to fill in a startup is a Product Management role. And how do you overcome that?

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

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OCTOBER 25, 2009

For example, a recent phone call I had with a young entrepreneur straight out of one of the most prestigious engineering schools in America he asked, “I have an offer for $400,000 in seed money but the VC wants me to agree now to bring in a new CEO.&# This company is doing its SEED round and they already want to bring someone new in.

Pakistan 297

Pakistan India Technical Review Software Review 297

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MARCH 5, 2010

The idea of aggregation is powerful in a world where your social communications are fragmented and increasingly hard to manage. The two most ambitious projects were ThereNow and IQ Engines. The pro’s (for me) – the UI was simply beautiful. I wrote about how to give demos in a previous post.

San Francisco 254

San Francisco Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review 254

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SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

My first company was used to manage workflow & share CAD drawings and plans on the $16 billion refurbishment of the London Underground. It was also used as a project management tool & document storage system for the largest private bank in Europe who even stored images of their bank vaults on our servers. million and then $5.9

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

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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

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OCTOBER 12, 2010

I was WAY off between my book research about what the engineering & construction market would want (my first company) and what they actually wanted. As they become more senior they take on management responsibilities such as planning, forecasting, pipeline reviews, coaching staff, etc. I only found out through customer meetings.

Hiring 346

Hiring Sales Startup Early Stage 346

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MAY 19, 2013

We knew we had a valuable product that an acquiring company would gain greatly from and a world-class engineering and product team that would be valued by a buyer. The truth is I have never enjoyed running team meetings, managing processes & procedures and deciding HR policies, promotions and org structures.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

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DECEMBER 5, 2010

mobile, locations, layering of services, data management, portability & more]. If you don’t manage what is said about you in social networks it could be detrimental. So tools in the areas of social CRM, social customer support & real-time data management will emerge. ask microsoft, aol/time warner & google].

Social Network 297

Social Network Networking Internet EC2 297

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JULY 23, 2013

If you’re not in the mood for a personal essay as an example of personal brand management you might want to wait for my next post. 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. ” F**k.

Marketing 385

Marketing Europe Engineer Networking 385

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SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

But the biggest thing to know is this: Companies who are scaling quickly in revenue and with a high gross margin often should invest as much capital in growth as they can manage responsibly because when you find a product / market fit and your company is growing at a very fast scale you want to capture market share before competition sets in.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

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APRIL 10, 2014

It’s why I wrote this post that the controversial first hire after an A round out to be an office manager / assistant / HR person who handles everything from stocking supplies to booking travel to scheduling group meetings. What they do with the money is add more engineers and maybe hiring a marketing person.

Startup 381

Startup PR Finance Hiring 381

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MAY 2, 2015

For a well-funded seed company I have controversially recommended hiring a great office manager that doubles as an administrative assistant. We are growing faster than at any time in the company’s history (which is a testament to sales, market, product, engineering and of course the founder & ceo!)

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

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MARCH 11, 2019

Part of running a board is managing the board meeting itself where you share your financial and operating progress, discuss your strategy & plans going forward and get & give information to your board members. Managing a board is a bit like flying?—?the If you have a big management team you can rotate who comes.

Networking 262

Networking Conversion Naming Hosting 262

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APRIL 2, 2014

CEOs who are tough but fair-minded set aggressive targets on “time” and communicate clearly with engineering why there is a deadline. For engineering it focuses one’s energy on a critical date and there is the satisfaction of being able to see the immediate results of your hard work in front of a large audience.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

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AUGUST 14, 2009

Do you work as a civil engineer on water projects and have great access to wealthy project developers? Find out who funded them – Contact the management teams. Basic search engine research can give many clues and if people do keep a blog and you want to meet the person then many clues are obviously there.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Ireland Technical Review Valuation 291

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DECEMBER 25, 2011

Maker Studios is dedicated to working with “talent” in the same way that Silicon Valley is dedicated to working with engineers. We are now attracting serious management talent, having recently brought in the venerable Courtney Holt as the COO. And if you happen to be “talent” (including tech engineers!)

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

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JUNE 27, 2011

While all your competitors are trying to copy your model, you’re already on to the next thing on your engineering team. And the product itself is invite-only so they can control volume and everybody has expectations managed. I haven’t heard them pounding their chest and running big marketing campaigns.

Early Stage 380

Early Stage Stealth Marketing Startup 380

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2014

I’m sure I would speak for the entire board and management team in asserting this. Nanea help leadership roles at EA (SVP, COO Global Online), Gaikai (Chief Product Officer, Chief Strategy Officer), JAMDAT (SVP), Machinma (COO) and currently textPlus (President & COO – including leading engineering and product).

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Leadership Engineer RSS 315

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JUNE 11, 2015

We brought on Nanea Reeves as President to shore up quality on the product, engineering and ops side. Through this process we managed to maintain our millions of active users and throughout the next year we will release a series of fun, innovative products that simply weren’t possible under our old architectures.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Los Angeles San Francisco Architecture 150

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APRIL 15, 2010

They bought distribution and engineering talent. I like EdgeCast and spent time with the management team. No big surprise. I talked about the platform moves of Twitter and why it should be expected. Atebits had one person if I understand correctly. If I were a betting man I’d say they paid sub $5 million. Good deal for all.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

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FEBRUARY 24, 2019

A director who hasn’t had a pre-conversation with management will not be as effective in the board meeting. Have calls or emails with other board members before the board meeting Equally I spend a lot of time talking with other non-management board member prior to the board meeting. even if they don’t necessarily agree on every topic.

Cofounder 251

Cofounder Conversion Management Founder 251

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Side Note : Upfront has hired Kerry Bennett as a member of our executive management team to run marketing – please follow her on Twitter here ]. 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

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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. Hello, Chair.

Founder 214

Founder San Diego SMS Los Angeles 214