Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Here is where I see this really play out: Product Management. Most CEOs fancy their own product skills and like to weigh in on priorities. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. CEOs often meddle in products and dev teams hate it.

Startup 150

Startup CTO Hire Sales Leadership 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 23, 2010

I wrote this post because I feel that too many products let features creep sink into the design under the guise of making the product more powerful but in turn they make their products less useful for the majority of users (who remain infrequent visitors and novices). And it worked brilliantly. With one exception. perspective.

Design 284

Design Product Software Engineer 284

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. PM’s are underrated in Silicon Valley these days.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

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. You hire people who look good on paper. After 6 months – you know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

People mistook extra doses of Ajax for a successful product. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. I have seen really great product people espouse the death of the business plan. Do so at your peril.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So what happens when production is reduced by 99% and distribution bends to infinity? Video production & distribution is becoming much more programatic. That would be like selling physical consumer products and deciding not to sell at Walmart. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology. MSN & AOL.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2016

We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on simple Internet products or mobile apps and while great companies are built doing this, our goal as a fund is to try and fund things that can be 100x returns if they work. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. In short, we’re after venture returns.

Cofounder 207

Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

Both Sides of the Table

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. I spent time with the folks (Klaus Schauser and Brian Danahoo) at AppFolio before they ever launched their products. They recorded it.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

Today we’re proud to talk more about Grove Labs – we really hope you’ll quickly check out this innovative product and we think many of you will be as impressed with Grove as we have been. One of the first bets we made in Agtech was Grove started by two young, passionate engineers out of MIT – Gabe and Jamie.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Software Review Founder Boston 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. You may know how much to pay in cash or equity for your new VP Engineering. Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

But on the other hand if you have a product with a very high gross margin (software, virtual goods, etc.) I believe in integrated products. I think many recent companies make the mistake of not investing enough in web products, if they invest anything at all. I love using Yelp’s mobile product. I also love Batch.

Mobile 334

Mobile Web Software Review San Francisco 334

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

functional workgroups vs. product workgroups). 8:17 How did you decide to go with either shrinkwrap or web only product? 46:50 Engines of Growth. what is the difference between a “pivot” or a “double dribble” (changing your business completely)? when is the right time to go big with PR?

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 5, 2010

Marco Zappacosta served up an cogent, business focused and nicely demo’d pitch of their product. The two most ambitious projects were ThereNow and IQ Engines. The game then interacts with the physical world product. Their product direction and demo increased 10x. Thumbtack is marketplace for local services.

San Francisco 254

San Francisco Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review 254

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

The confidence, energy, passion and humor that are hallmarks of Jonathan became muted in the pressures of needing to show financial successes to match one’s enormous product vision and ambitions. Do we have a heavy-touch implementation and support or a lightweight one by integrating with products that white-label us?

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

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. One who wants to commercialize his product and start charging while the other prefers to not charge.

Founder 340

Founder Sacramento Cofounder Technical Review 340

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. Gross margin (GM) is the amount of profit you make per sale of your product or service taking into account your total costs of selling that product or service. We want a strong balance sheet (um, ok. otherwise I prefer to invest less and risk less).

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

“…if you look at a lot of the early stage investors, whether it be Union Square Ventures or First Round or Jeff Clavier at Softtech or Dave McClure – we want to try the product, we want to experience the product, we want to get a sense of how the entrepreneur is thinking about it. You still need the presentation to back that up.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup. how to market our products and company. He formerly held many roles at Salesforce including running sales operations and many product teams.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

You know, the weird thing, Derek, and I should probably let you speak some time, but I was deeply technical when I went into Andersen consulting, and I got paid much less than engineers who graduated, because I had a degree in economics. They paid engineers $4,000 more entry-point. Engineering vs. non-engineering. [00:10:32]

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

In product business it is often measured over multiple purchases and assumptions are made about the repeat rates and in the enterprise or services world LTV can be based on churn rates, which are notoriously hard to predict in an early-stage business. If you can’t raise — you’re dead. End of story. LTV is imprecise.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

I can’t tell you how many people have thanked me for this advice and say their productivity increased exponentially. It freed up Ophir to grow out our sales organization, to work more closely with agencies, to innovate on product and to raise capital. You created the damn product! It literally can put you out of business.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

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). They’re great at orchestrating your company to deliver product demos. They sell more commoditized or well understood products that can be sold via a well-defined process.

Early Stage 350

Early Stage Startup Sales Campaign 350

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.). My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. It’s a buggy product but pretty damn cool.

Early Stage 380

Early Stage Stealth Marketing Startup 380

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. . “We’re all equal co-founders and we don’t care about titles.&# Functional roles provide more clarity around roles and responsibilities.

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2010

This is probably because many founders are product or technology people. The mistake many startup people make is they hire a “sales person&# to go out and talk with customers so they can do what they’re good at which is building product or “running the company.&# Sales people are a different breed, you say.

Hiring 346

Hiring Sales Startup Early Stage 346

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

He’s thoughtful about markets, investors, products and is always very well reasoned in his arguments. He explained how users at the time were encountering “social engineering threats” rather than “technical threats” and that his company took an “East Coast” approach to the problem as they built an automated system that rated websites.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Cofounder API 281

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Product : You should build a product or a prototype. You cannot be just a biz dev type, salesperson, marketing genius or whatever and divorce yourself from product. Great companies are built by having great products. And a great product starts with the founder. But for most businesses it is. Go research it.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Ireland Technical Review Valuation 291

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

No carrier in their right mind wanted to cede control of the software but Apple was willing to offer its products exclusive through one carrier in exchange for not having any carrier software on the device. Paid Engineering – One final thing I would often ask for that I see very few others doing is “paid engineering.”

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

We graduate more engineers in our greater region than anywhere else in the US. We have top 25 engineering schools than anywhere else, too. We have a large number of highly talented engineers and entrepreneurs now developing companies in our local market. Buying local teams with talented engineering groups. Maker Studios.

Los Angeles 318

Los Angeles Silicon Valley LP Warrant 318

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. Let’s say your a junior developer, marketer, product manager, biz dev person at a startup or well-established technology company. Mavens & Super Mavens.

Networking 366

Networking CTO Hire Technical Review Email 366

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Think of it kind of like running a national chain of restaurants and occasionally stopping in to wait tables to have a more intuitive sense for your processes, work conditions and the quality of your products. I then spent time with the VP Product Management to understand his functional roadmap and his perception of what customers wanted.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In addition to Seth, the core team he pulled together consisted of Elaine, a product person with front-end engineering skills and sharp design sense, and Sandy a back-end server engineer. I spend 1-on-1 time with every one of the companies of which I'm on the board and find this to be our most productive time.].

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

And I’ve talked openly about why many services businesses should not feel product envy and chase the commensurate growth rates. We worked with police departments, the ministry of defense, many of the largest utility companies in Europe and a ton of contractors, engineers, architects, developers and suppliers. million and then $5.9

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

Golden rule of branding for me: 1) name your company or product your URL and 2) don’t paint yourself into a corner. &# Tweet&# = corner. They bought distribution and engineering talent. Quirky - Platform facilitating collaborative design of consumer products through an online community. But I made it for a reason.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

If you pull hard at the time end of the spectrum you end up shipping inferior product. CEOs who are tough but fair-minded set aggressive targets on “time” and communicate clearly with engineering why there is a deadline. You see there is a creative tension along the spectrum of time and scope.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. But the venture guys don’t make the calls on what the product / business guys do. But even he would feel conflicted when I had to cut the engineering team because he valued our product more than his investment.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

Many buying companies price these deals on the basis of $1 million per engineer on the team for an early-stage deal. Usually the location of the engineers matters great so having offshore engineering makes acquihires unlikely. Hire legions of young, impressionable graduates from the top engineering universities.

Liquidation Preference 357

Liquidation Preference Early Stage Retention Lock-up Period 357