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The Secret History of Minnesota Part 1: Engineering Research Associates

Steve Blank

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
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Leadership is More Than a Memo

Steve Blank

The book explores the role of gender in the tech industry – at startups and venture capital firms – and the interaction between men and women in the two. While Silicon Valley has grown to have global influence, in many ways the cultural leadership from the venture community has dramatically shrunk in the last decade.

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Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

Raising Venture Capital. 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.

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Stories of Opportunity from the First Round Capital Key Hire Wire – VP of Sales, CTO, VP of Engineering

This is going to be BIG.

A week or so ago, we launched the Key Hire Wire at First Round. You will initially spend majority of time personally working with individual accounts and coaching sales team. We are looking for a seasoned engineer with management experience to take ownership of our engineering team. " "Hit it.

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Spotlight on Engineering Team Building: Lessons learned from Algolia

Cracking the Code

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. We asked Sylvain to share his secret tips with us.

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Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

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
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Startup Suicide – Rewriting the Code

Steve Blank

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.