Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

They make hardware with a large part of their innovation in embedded software and services. The CFO asked me to stay as one of the engineering directors came in for a meeting. So, this was a meeting of last resort, as the engineering director was making one last appeal to the CFO to keep his team in town. I wish I hadn’t.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 308

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 13, 2015

This is the perennial question for startups who have started to taste success, and are ready to invest in themselves in the form of new helping hands. The question is: How do you decide what role is most important to hire for? If I hire someone to do X, I’ll have time for Y and Z. Hire the best person for that role.

Part-Time VPE 120

Part-Time VPE Hiring Retention Revenue 120

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. .&# I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Context here.)

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Projecting from the seed stage, there are two types of team-building topics you want to address – key senior hires and org-level team building. As the company progresses through product market fit (PMF), you will want to highlight other key senior hires required to scale and round out the functional expertise of the exec team.

Part-Time VPE 195

Part-Time VPE Seed Stage CTO Hire Forecast 195

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. My observation was that the CEO and VP of Engineering were confusing cause and effect.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 16, 2018

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series/ebook, over the years I’ve noticed that I tend to frequently share certain Lucky7 posts with entrepreneurs we’ve backed , team members at data.world, or other startup investors I know. It is all about how you hire the best and the amazing impact doing so will have on your culture.

Part-Time VPE 48

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Hiring Austin 48

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference The Lean Startup Conference is next week--and now that we can step back and see all the speakers and mentors, we have to say: Wow. Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 28, 2014

Post by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts for The Lean Startup Conference At this year’s Lean Startup Conference , we seek to answer the difficult questions you face as an entrepreneur. We particularly like this post, Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good? ,

Part-Time VPE 160

Part-Time VPE Sales Lean Cofounder 160

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 9, 2013

I’ve written before about hiring for cultural fit, and about the importance of prioritizing cultural fit over competence when hiring at startups. I started thinking about it again when I saw this Dilbert comic , because it pokes fun at the culture of startups and their propensity only to hire people who fit into them.

Part-Time VPE 153

Part-Time VPE Hiring Engineer Portfolio 153

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

We all like to think of startups as “non hierarchic&# organizations and to some extent that should be true. As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. Don’t skip.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 8, 2011

If you’re looking for a space, simply type in an address and find available spaces around it. Kowitt and Gupta then hired a full-time VP of Engineering, Nick Shiftan, who rebuilt the site from scratch. “For (us), the best part of entrepreneurship is working with a great team.

Part-Time VPE 223

Part-Time VPE Philadelphia Singapore Engineer 223

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

If you post up an ad to an online job board asking for someone to join your very high risk early stage startup company the odds of getting someone who decent are slim to none. The first part is the hardest part: hunting for a programmer. If they hire an accountant to help prepare and file their taxes that may cost around $500.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. A CTO’s real value is in finding opportunities with asymmetric payoffs. They seek the 80/20 economical solution, present options, and discuss tradeoffs. “A

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

And if you’re the founder of a successful startup and you’re not named Mark Zuckerberg, there’s the day when you’re replaced as CEO. So says David Feinleib , author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed. Maybe they don’t hire fast enough or they’re too short-tempered to attract top talent. There’s death.

Part-Time VPE 133

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 133

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. that would get the interview.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Matching Hiring 54

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

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. For lots of reasons that never worked out, but I liked him so much that the following year I tried to hire him as the VP of Engineering of Ardent. (He

Advisory Board 260

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 9, 2010

This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.? Of hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory , almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, "If you build this product, I'll give you $X.". If you can't find ten people who say they'll buy it, your company is bullshit. Short-sighted, no?

Software Review 312

Software Review Part-Time VPE Houston Cofounder 312

Austin Startup

AUGUST 19, 2018

If you are in the Austin startup community and have another panel to promote, please leave it in the comments below! 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. Don’t worry.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Fractional VPE Austin 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

The story starts with a company you probably never heard of – Engineering Research Associates. While unique for the time, this public-private partnership was in-line with the wartime experiment of Vannevar Bush’s OSRD – using civilians in universities to develop military weapons. Parker agreed to invest. Paul was the place to be.

Minnesota 281

Minnesota Engineer Minneapolis Silicon Valley 281

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

And if you’re the founder of a successful startup and you’re not named Mark Zuckerberg, there’s the day when you’re replaced as CEO. So says David Feinleib , author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed. Maybe they don’t hire fast enough or they’re too short-tempered to attract top talent. There’s death.

Part-Time VPE 70

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 70

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Web Startup Lessons Advice from a CTO and Entrepreneur Home About Startup Advice: When to Use a Consulting CTO There are not many to be found. 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.&#

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Share this: chief technical officer chief technology officer cto interim cto job description start-up startup cto web cto Weve been swapping some thoughts with Daniel Kehoe , a consulting CTO acquaintance of ours from across the pond. | Apache with Django and mod_wsgi » Posted by Aidan, 6 th July 2009.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

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

CTO Hire Part-Time VPE Architecture Ruby 40

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

They may run a function, such as product or engineering, or they may have a broader operational role and carry a COO title. For example, at one of my portfolio companies, the other founder looked after administration, finance, operations, product and engineering. But then the company hired a VP of operations.

Cofounder 45

Cofounder Founder Part-Time VPE Portfolio 45

Altgate

OCTOBER 1, 2010

To the right of that are five charts one each for: Current Equity Equity at Hire Base Salary Target Bonus Actual Total Cash Each of these bar charts shows the respective compensation for the management team on a percentile scale (compared to the cohort). For obvious reasons, we compare founders to founders and non-founders to non-founders.

Part-Time VPE 39

Part-Time VPE Startup Salary Equity 39

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

Though CTO as a traditional full-time position exists for decades, some companies do not feel they need a technology executive. CTO engagement mainly concerns startups and mature companies that have technologies at the core of their business. For instance, technology-centered startups are limited in their budget to afford a CTO.

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

Both Sides of the Table

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

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. 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 make everyone a founder.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

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. Suffice to say, most of the hackers Ive known have been men. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. In founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. Published on: July 13, 2011 Posted By Angie Tags: Elizabeth Knopf , Finding A Co-Founder , FounderDating , Sorced , Technical Co-Founder , Tips & Tricks. WHATS HOT: EVENTS NEWS LEARN CAREER VIDEOS ESPAÑOL.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

www.paulgraham.com

AUGUST 1, 2008

Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper. Now as well as being produced by startups, this pattern is happening to startups. Its so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. Plus in a startup you could make much more money.

Web 54

Web Startup Silicon Valley Technical Review 54

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. But finding such people is more than a full time job. Indeed, I spend about half my time on it, while Lisa spends about all hers. But what they do is very, very rarely startups.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107