Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

The director had complained to his boss, the VP of Engineering, who admitted his hands were tied, as this was a “facilities matter,” and the VP of facilities reported to the CFO. 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. The founders.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 308

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

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. As a content management system we had lots of write activities and went with Postgres.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Ben's Blog

OCTOBER 14, 2010

The biggest difference between being a great functional manager and being a great general manager—and particularly a great CEO—is that as a general manager, you must hire and manage people who are far more competent at their jobs than you would be at their jobs. Probably none. Step 1: Know what you want.

Part-Time VPE 78

Part-Time VPE Hiring Wisconsin Matching 78

Version One Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2016

There’s a lot of debate surrounding the right time to bring executive level hires into your start-up. Every start-up is unique so the same path won’t work for every company and management team. With that said, here are some general guidelines I have developed over the years for building a management team.

Part-Time VPE 60

Part-Time VPE Management Finance Vertical 60

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

Cracking the Code

MAY 2, 2019

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.

Part-Time VPE 48

Part-Time VPE Engineer Retention API 48

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 28, 2014

We particularly like this post, Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good? , In order to ensure completeness, I find it useful to include criteria from the following sub-divisions when hiring executives: Will the executive be world class at running the function? Melissa Bell, Vox.com.

Part-Time VPE 160

Part-Time VPE Sales Lean Cofounder 160

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.” ” This is where the vexing part comes in. In comparison, consider a VP of Engineering who has worked in three different companies.

Part-Time VPE 70

Part-Time VPE Leadership Engineer Hiring 70

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

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. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager.

Part-Time VPE 223

Part-Time VPE Philadelphia Singapore Engineer 223

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. Short and Sweet.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Matching Hiring 54

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics. Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

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

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 adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics. Autonomy to self-manage.

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

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 hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Don’t make everyone a founder.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

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. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Austin Startup

AUGUST 19, 2018

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. You just raised $10MM from Sequoia, you’re 3 co-founders, and you want to go hire the VP of Engineering from Uber. Don’t worry.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Fractional VPE Austin 48

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The first part is the hardest part: hunting for a programmer. If you have a friend who is a recruiter then ask them to tell you what they recommend that will not cost anything. If they hire an accountant to help prepare and file their taxes that may cost around $500. Be sure to post your opportunity here.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Often founders with a genius for product are not so good at managing people. Maybe they don’t hire fast enough or they’re too short-tempered to attract top talent. In one way or another, someone on your board has been indicating to you that it’s time to ramp it up well before the ultimate conversation ever takes place.

Part-Time VPE 133

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 133

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Start-ups often hire at one extreme -- closer to a Lead Developer or VP of Engineering -- whereas corporates may focus on their CIO, which is potentially quite a different role. Strategic Report to the CEO or board as an active part of the senior management team. Firstly, theres no one-size-fits-all description.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Often founders with a genius for product are not so good at managing people. Maybe they don’t hire fast enough or they’re too short-tempered to attract top talent. In one way or another, someone on your board has been indicating to you that it’s time to ramp it up well before the ultimate conversation ever takes place.

Part-Time VPE 70

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 70

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. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

I first met Steve when he was VP of Engineering at Centerline software, a software development tools startup, and I was a junior in college. Kaufer originally hired writers to product professional reviews and allowed user reviews on a whim. Scaling Lesson 1: Focus On Finding A Great Business Model. Think about that.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Product and Engineering. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Product and Engineering. Management and Company Building. -->. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Ian Langworth started his career as an O’Reilly author and software engineer at Google. Plusstartup.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Engineer Software Review Part-Time VPE 52

devver.wordpress.com

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

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. Tactical CTOs are internally focused, manages the team, makes the day-to-day tactics so the product gets out there. Strive for balance.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Part-Time VPE Architecture Ruby 40

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

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.&# If you find him, he’s gold, and not only because of his knowledge and experience. For one thing, you’ll learn from his mistakes.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. Being a manager didnt sound fun - deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other peoples actions? So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

The challenge for the other founder is that as a startup evolves from “the jungle” (super early stages, chaotic organization, prior to achieving product-market fit) to the “dirt road” (developing some organizational maturity and initial product market fit), senior functional executives often get hired from the outside to take over departments.

Cofounder 45

Cofounder Founder Part-Time VPE Portfolio 45

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. Expensify Blog. Sunday edit : Still going!

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Published on: July 13, 2011 Posted By Angie Tags: Elizabeth Knopf , Finding A Co-Founder , FounderDating , Sorced , Technical Co-Founder , Tips & Tricks. Thus, I embarked on the journey to find a technical co-founder. Given those criteria, where are the watering holes to find these engineers?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Altgate

OCTOBER 1, 2010

The idea behind the Scorecard is to provide a comprehensive benchmark for the management team of a particular company compared to it’s specific peer group. Not only that, there are a number of new features that will be rolled out with this year’s survey results; one of the biggest of which is a company “Scorecard.&#

Part-Time VPE 39

Part-Time VPE Startup Salary Equity 39