Feld Thoughts

JUNE 16, 2016

Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Let’s focus on “ recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company.” Now, ask her to tell you the story of the company, the growth experience, how she built and managed her team, and how she interacted with the rest of the team.

Part-Time VPE 70

Part-Time VPE Leadership Engineer Hiring 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

Headquartered in San Francisco, AppDirect makes it easy for businesses to find, buy, manage, and monitor cloud services from a central location. Well, not always, and the process of managing multiple cloud services can be a mess. The post AppDirect Is Hiring After Closing a $50 Million Financing appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Finance 70

Finance San Francisco Hiring Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 23, 2012

They’ve just posted their first position in San Francisco to help manage and grow existing customers. Many of Gnip ‘s customers and partners are in the bay area and they have decided to begin adding people in San Francisco to better support those clients.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Hiring Partner Customer 131

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

In the last five years, I’ve managed to find the time to write, publish and promote multiple books, including two award-winning bestsellers , develop a web application, maintain a blog, and present at conferences. They hired someone else to wash the dishes and clean the house. Maybe you just want to kick butt in your day job.

Technical Review 195

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Software Review Cofounder 195

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

For lessons from Matt and his Return Path management team, many of who are now execs at Bolster, you want to read Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company’s Critical Functions and Teams. I’ve worked with Matt for over 20 years and have experienced many ups and downs.

Fractional CTO 70

Fractional CTO Cofounder Startup Lead Investor 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Fred Wilson, also a long time friend of Matt’s, has a great detailed post up today about it titled Bolster Your Management Team And Board that goes through Bolster in detail. And a big part of doing that is accessing “fractional talent” which means people that don’t work for your company full-time and permanently.

Networking 144

Networking Colorado Social Network Community 144

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

Jud is an extremely experienced CTO / technical product manager and developer, but had never been a CEO. Oh, and they are hiring as fast as they can find great people ; across the spectrum (business, sales, & engineering). At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO.

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Feld Thoughts

MAY 17, 2013

The same is true of hiring an executive. Dick made the point that the cliche “only hire A players” is completely obvious and banal. CEOs don’t run around saying “hey – let’s hire C players – that’s what we want – C players.” Management leadership management'

Hiring 168

Hiring Leadership Restful Management 168

Feld Thoughts

MAY 13, 2021

Funny enough, we still didn’t think we were going to do anything, but the managing director for Techstars (who I later ended up hiring) told me that Foundry Group is super legit. She was able to quickly get up to speed on the company we were building and my vision for Gig Wage.

Dallas 171

Dallas Cofounder Texas Venture Capital 171

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

During one of the Techstars Boston cohorts where I’ve been Mentor-in-Residence, I worked with a 20-something CEO founder (code named Mary) who, shortly after raising a seed round of several million dollars, hired a high-powered exec, granting a significant equity option.

Boston 118

Boston LP Startup Equity 118

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 16, 2019

The budgets also have huge variability after financings, when suddenly the budget gets recast given the new money in the bank, or the constraints against hiring are removed and costs increase suddenly, even if this is only to “catch up” with the budget that was underhired to. Some companies are excellent at managing this process.

Government 70

Government Finance Revenue Management 70

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2012

My long time friend Chris Moody , president and COO of Gnip, has offered to write some guest posts on management – we’ll call the series Moody on Management. Startups thrive when each person hired is smarter than the person hiring them. By the way, Gnip is hiring ! Don’t agree with everything I say.

Startup 146

Startup Matching Hiring Early Stage 146

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 31, 2012

And, of course, I should say that Oblong is hiring. We’re helping to invent that future and we’re always looking for hackers, program managers, and experienced engineering leads. Fab and prototyping capabilities are clearly on the same downward-sloping, creativity-enabling, curve as cameras and studio gear.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Cofounder Video Cloud 127

Feld Thoughts

MAY 22, 2012

Chris Moody , president and COO of Gnip, is back with a guest post in his Moody on Management series. This week I wanted to cover a simple process for hiring managers to follow when communicating with candidates about salary requirements. Oh, by the way, Gnip is hiring ! Enjoy and comment freely!

Conversion Rights 135

Conversion Rights Conversion Salary Hiring 135

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

When I talked to a headhunter recently, in the midst of the worst market for legal jobs ever, she told me that the one employer who was always hiring people with experience in patents was IV. So, anecdotally, they hire a lot of lawyers. They set up a lot of shell companies. Now think about where this money would go otherwise.

.Net 135

.Net New York Software Texas 135

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 11, 2019

Assuming the people addressing the issues were the right people, and the extended team (management and board) focused on the correct problems, and then the team gave each other enough time to see whether or not what they were doing addressed the issues, more often than not things ended up in a happy place.

Balance Sheet 154

Balance Sheet Cash Position Leadership Restful 154

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

We hired, then fired, a bunch of part time people and then just worked together – the two of us – for the next 18 months until we hired our first employee (Shawn Broderick). Dave became the software guy, managing the team and getting the work done. Management management motivation' First, some context.

Boston 146

Boston Management Hiring Technology 146

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 17, 2013

For many management teams, especially in rapidly growing, or mature companies, it’s an important part of their existence as culturally we’ve oriented compensation, bonuses, and future compensation around an annual cycle. I embrace this – my goal is to help these entrepreneurs and management teams win.

Stock Options 134

Stock Options Stock Vesting Retention 134

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

The managing director for your cohort trusts that you’ll help the founders. After the meeting, you vent to the Techstars managing director that this company is in real trouble because the founders aren’t paying attention to this element you find important. This item (#17) has to do with you, not the companies.

Boston 94

Boston LP Reputation Stock 94

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2012

I hear some form of the following question frequently from founders that are starting to have early success: “How do we hire a bunch of new people and grow the company quickly without losing the culture we’ve worked so hard to establish?” The people you hire will come with their own set of values.

Startup 152

Startup Semantic Hiring Employee 152

Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2014

Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh have written an outstanding and important book called The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age. Books casnocha employee hiring hoffman retention the alliance' I encourage you to get a copy right now and read it this weekend. The post Book: The Alliance appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Retention 147

Retention Cofounder Angel Investor Employee 147

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 31, 2011

A bunch of our portfolio companies are hiring. And if you are looking for something in Boulder, don’t forget that I manage a CEO list that I’ll happily email your resume to. Just today, I got emails about new job pages at Cheezburger (Seattle and NY), SendGrid (Boulder and LA), and Attachments.me (Bay Area).

Seattle 132

Seattle Aggregator Portfolio Email 132

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Throughout the summer, interns will work during the day at the company that hires them; in the evenings, they will attend various dinners, events, and workshops.

Colorado 138

Colorado Startup Early Stage Matching 138

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 12, 2011

My friends at Orbotix are hiring. Following is the list of open positions. If you fit the description, like playing with robots, want free beer all day, and live in Boulder, email them a note with a resume. - Game Designer : Are you passionate about gaming and have a deep understanding of game design and game mechanics?

PHP 124

PHP API Social Media Design 124

Feld Thoughts

JULY 7, 2011

Angela has been a big part of both hiring many of the people and orchestrating the culture of the company so I very much value her point of view on interviewing. Highly qualified yet bad attitude hires wreak havoc with your culture, suck up a ton of management bandwidth and ultimately don’t get anything done.

Bandwidth 134

Bandwidth Leadership Hiring Sales 134

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2020

At Foundry Group, we are hiring a Head of Network. ABOUT US Foundry Group is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies and venture fund managers. At Foundry, we are not top-down managers. The post Come Join Us at Foundry Group: Hiring a Head of Network appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Networking 176

Networking Hiring North America Venture Capital 176

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2012

They are problem solvers and master risk managers. For almost every startup, hiring a Veteran will add to the collective diversity of perspective and experience. Talk about hiring Veterans with your co-founders and employees. I am a firm believer that Veterans have a skillset well suited for startups. Stay tuned for details!

Entrepreneur 140

Entrepreneur Cofounder Community America 140

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

Or in 2015 you had raised a bunch of money, hired a lot of people, and assumed it was all going to just work out according to the spreadsheet model you used to build headcount and revenue expectations based on the headcount. .” Let’s assume 2016 resulted in some layoffs in the second half of the year.

Forecast 70

Forecast Revenue Hiring Management 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

Standing Cloud , one of the Boulder-based companies we seed funded last year, is hiring a Java Developer. They are a provider of software and services that facilitate deployment and management of application software, using on-demand cloud servers from providers such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud, GoGrid, and others.

Java 99

Java Cloud Developer API 99

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2012

I’ve managed to get in a solid four hours of writing on my Startup Communities book each day and will have a full draft to circulate to a small group of people on Saturday. In fact, empathy and humility in potential hires are the best predictors that they’re going to fit with our team and be TAGFEE. For humility.

New York 136

New York Finance Metrics Email 136

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 14, 2018

” Or, we won’t hire anyone new, other than replacing attrition, until after we have revenue of $X / person.” Then, I like to roll into metrics that create a floor on how the business will operate. For example, “We won’t have a month of negative EBITDA.”

Acquisition 145

Acquisition IPO Metrics Finance 145

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 13, 2010

The article is Opinion: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell and is a great story from Keith Yost, an MIT grad, about his relatively short experience working at BCG in Dubai as a management consultant. It’s a story that will be familiar to anyone who started working at a management consulting firm straight out of school.

RSS 121

RSS Boston Partner Management 121

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2016

If you sell a physical product, you have a lot of Q4 upside and unpredictability, but now you have to manage your cash to get to Q4 so that you can invest in building inventory to over-perform. The smart CEO has already reduced her hiring plan but in an informal way. By creating an entirely new budget for 2H16, you make it official.

Revenue 70

Revenue .Net Metrics Restful 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 25, 2016

If you outsource your accounting, hire a VP Finance. Now, consider how many different overlapping things you are using. When you are tiny, it’s fun to experiment around with different things.

SMS 70

SMS Database Finance Portfolio 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 25, 2015

Through the foresight of Liz Hansen and Jane Brautigam (the Boulder City Manager), Code for America is working on a project with the City of Boulder to help the city increase its engagement with stakeholders in Boulder around civic issues, including the city’s housing plan.

America 70

America Community Denver Colorado 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 22, 2010

It was an awesome weekend – we held an event modeled after the Apprentice TV show (without the bad hair) that had three challenges: (1) Marketing, (2) Hiring / Interview, and (3) 5-Year Plan & Budget. Josh Runge ‘07 and Zach Clifford ‘08 are working furiously on a task management/task optimization startup called Lazymeter.

Massachusetts 99

Massachusetts Aggregator Boston Venture Capital 99

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 13, 2010

Most software patent plaintiffs hire their lawyers on contingent fee. These cases are also sometimes on contingency, but the plaintiff usually hires very inexpensive counsel, with no intention of litigating the case, and those lawyers are fine with the relatively small payouts they get from small settlements.

Software 127

Software Texas Hiring Startup 127