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DECEMBER 17, 2015

For the company, he’s led multiple tech teams focused on products like voice and image search, Google Search for iOS, Google Glass, and Android Wear. I recently chatted with Saurya about how he approaches hiring engineers at Google and what founders can learn. office, right in the heart of MIT.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Engineer Software Review Founder 120

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FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Recently, I’ve been working with a few of our portfolio companies to help them think about how to recruit and interview their first analytics hire. When to make your first analytics hire. So when should you start thinking about your first analytics hire? What to look for in your first analytics hire.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

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APRIL 26, 2018

At the seed stage, hiring great people is one of the most important things to get right. Without the right team in place, it’s much harder to build great products, find customers, and not run out of money in the process. If you have to hire several people this year, you won’t want to miss this session.

Hiring 120

Hiring Portfolio Seed Stage Acquisition 120

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MARCH 29, 2016

Founders furiously work their networks, post open positions on every reasonable-looking job board, and hope to quickly start hiring. While an entrepreneur’s enthusiasm is certainly necessary for effective recruiting, inefficient hiring processes put a strain on a startup’s already limited human capital resources.

Metrics 120

Metrics Founder CTO Hire Technical Review 120

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APRIL 21, 2016

You need to bring in the right people to build your product. This idea of flexible generalists hired early leads to another question: How do you then vet potential hires? Now, not even Nostradamus can predict each twist and turn your product might take, but don’t you want to be in the best position to navigate?

Engineer 149

Engineer Hiring Non-Compete Dividend 149

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JANUARY 23, 2017

They talk about what business development roles actually do for their companies, and when and why a founder would hire someone to lead up the function. This is a deep, nuanced exploration of a job role that doesn’t often fit as neatly into departmental categories as engineering, product, sales, or marketing.

Hiring 120

Hiring Developer Startup Channel 120

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JANUARY 5, 2016

Even experienced startup execs who have hired and built teams sometimes find there are nuances to learn between building a team within a larger company versus hiring the first dozen folks in a startup. What did we like/not like about past companies’ approach to hiring and team development? It’s a moving target.

Founder 120

Founder Cofounder Startup Early Stage 120

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MARCH 3, 2016

On the other hand, hiring a content marketing consultant or freelance writer is different than hiring a marketing person more traditionally. How to Hire a Content Marketing Consultant for Your Startup. Relevant Resource from NextView: How some founders are using content to go distribution first, product second.

Hiring 120

Hiring Marketing Startup Portfolio 120

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DECEMBER 3, 2015

Hiring and onboarding new engineers are time consuming and expensive. A team that can mitigate turnover is a more productive and efficient team. The culture they have built, the thoughtfulness that goes into the hiring process, and an emphasis on peer mentoring has helped keep engineers at thredUP. In the past 3.5

CTO Hire 120

CTO Hire Retention Marketing Engineer 120

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JULY 5, 2022

One hour I’m deep into product development, the next I’m thinking about our hiring needs and recruiting, to the next on a sales call. My favorite part is how many different hats I wear. I’ve learned and grown more as a leader than I ever could have imagined.

DC 156

DC Software Review Government Boston 156

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one? There’s simply too much nuance and too many options, all with varied pros and cons, to suggest a silver bullet in your hiring process. More importantly, A-players attract and hire other A-players.

Hiring 336

Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

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FEBRUARY 4, 2016

Arrive to the market too soon and there’s no demand for the product. The challenge, however, is that there will be people—VCs, potential customers, and employees—who don’t understand the concept, or don’t see the value of your product. This depends on the product, of course. As they say, timing is everything.

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Software Review Sales Cycle 120

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FEBRUARY 9, 2022

You have unbounded curiosity for emerging trends, a love for experimentation, and you’re always eager to dive into new products and technologies before others do. We lead or co-lead most of our investments and invest very early…80% of the unicorns we have backed were pre-product at the time of our investment. Who We Are Looking For.

Technical Review 156

Technical Review North America Seed Stage Bandwidth 156

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NOVEMBER 4, 2019

I’m often surprised by how much effort seed stage teams put into building an early product and how little credit that receives from investors. In most cases, the two most important things to prove early on are 1) that the founders can attract A+ talent and 2) that there are signals of market demand for their product.

Seed Stage 180

Seed Stage Bootstrapping Demand Early Stage 180

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MARCH 3, 2015

Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. Initially, we promoted it to a list that we’d already developed through Website Grader, the free app our CTO Dharmesh Shah had built before we even had a product. How did you address that?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

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SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds. According to First Round’s State of Startups 3 out of 4 early-stage founders (series A or earlier) say hiring is their #1 concern, but the same amount say they spend less than 20% of their time on it.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

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APRIL 21, 2015

Georgiades (Zumper): I think business school is more about soul searching than spending 24 hours building a product. There is plenty of time post-HBS to crank on building product. Poort (Rescale): Since we were not able to raise money early on, we just started building a product that we ourselves as engineers would want to use.

Founder 120

Founder Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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APRIL 27, 2020

Yet most of the technology innovations have centered around solving problems for the white collar professionals – think LinkedIn, Slack, Zoom, Atlassian, and many others that are focused on things like desk-job productivity and remote working that are not relevant to most hands on workers. A product that really sticks.

Marketing 156

Marketing Retention Non-Compete Algorithm 156

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OCTOBER 15, 2014

Include both positives and negatives for a more productive board conversation, which is especially critical in the seed stage since nearly everything is in “figure it out” mode. The Challenges/Setbacks section should be completely transparent to set up a candid, productive discussion. Section 4: Product Roadmap.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

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MAY 14, 2019

You needed to find the most scrappy and cost efficient way to get a product out, and in the process learned tons about the market and customer you are trying to serve. Their early hires are probably much stronger too, which allows for better execution as well. Great execution may allow a “nice-to-have” product to gain early traction.

Founder 256

Founder Agile Cofounder Seed Capital 256

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FEBRUARY 14, 2017

Today, we discuss Dan’s smart process hiring his early technical talent — both leadership and front-line developers. to learn more about the company and their product. Dan Reich is the CEO and co-founder of Troops, a company bringing artificial intelligence to your sales team’s workflow, right in Slack.

Artificial Inteligence 159

Artificial Inteligence Seed Stage Founder Cofounder 159

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SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

As a result, Vin has a great framework for deciding if this is a viable path for your product. Exactly how Vin launched Yipit.com and built his list to the initial 20K and 50K users. Why Vin decided to pivot the business (read: launch a second startup) and what he learned going from B2C to B2B.

CTO Hire 120

CTO Hire Framework Cofounder Seed Stage 120

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APRIL 8, 2020

Stevens has held roles across verticals such as head of sales, marketing, product, and professional services at five startups over twenty years. Early on, startups are usually in a broad segment of markets, looking for product market fit. Another thing you should slow down with is hiring.

B2B 156

B2B Angel Investor Vertical Retention 156

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FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Most startups don’t have the luxury of hiring an experienced PM early in their journey. Many founders have to turn to brute force to figure it out, even when they themselves don’t have practitioner product management experience. they can range from customer acquisition, product engagement/stickiness, or business model.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120

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SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

This profile of founder tends to be younger, obsessively driven, and inclined towards making big, bold, necessary mistakes early and often on the path towards product-market fit. New tech ecosystems often benefit from entrepreneurs who will dive in blind and figure out their direction along the way.

New York City 120

New York City New York Cofounder Channel 120

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MAY 31, 2019

But the ability to defy gravity can manifest itself in other places too, like in selling product to customers (ahead of what full vision of the product is actually built), or in recruiting additional hires. Some might argue that what goes up must come down.

Valuation 149

Valuation Portfolio Metrics Founder 149

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APRIL 30, 2015

In many instances, you raise an institutional round to either fulfill a product strategy or go-to-market strategy or you’re increasing sales and marketing hires, so you have better visibility into what needs to happen in the next six, 12, 18 months. Reason being, there’s more of a defined strategy for the company.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

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MARCH 1, 2016

Investors and smart hires will always do appropriate diligence before investing money and time, but they won’t bother doing that unless they are excited about your story. Thus, Slack was born in the company’s darkest hour, and now Slack’s team is bringing a new platform for team productivity to the world.

Founder 120

Founder Technical Review Cofounder Non-Compete 120

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OCTOBER 22, 2015

One of the best and most positive movements proliferating around the tech community is what Product Hunt founder and CEO Ryan Hoover calls “building in public.” We’ll need your contributions and your knowledge around categories like Product & Design , Marketing & Growth , Hiring & Talent , Fundraising , and more.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Seed Capital Syndication Syndicate 120

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JANUARY 6, 2021

First, my partner Melody tends to very quickly drill-down on the value proposition of a product or service to the end user as well as the incentives of other relevant parties (eg: suppliers, distribution partners, collaborators, etc). So here are the ares that my partners tend to hone-on on, and some thoughts on how to address them.

Partner 180

Partner Distribution Founder Acquisition 180

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MAY 24, 2017

Christina Sass is co-founder and COO of Andela, a company that locates, trains, and staffs world-class engineers in Africa for hire by tech companies in the US and elsewhere. They’ve sparked a movement, cracked the code on finding great coders, and have attracted investors like Mark Zuckerberg.

Africa 227

Africa Engineer Coder Cofounder 227

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2018

Nicole most recently comes to us from SmartBear Software , where she was responsible for the launch and marketing for an entire product: overseeing activities like PR, creative, content creation, and social media engagement. hiring a great team. building a product people love. getting customers and. raising capital).

Portfolio 120

Portfolio Boston PR Social Media 120

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

The former can include expected burn and runway, guideposts on hiring, and resource allocation. develop and launch X product, reach Y number of users, generate $Z amount revenue). The latter should simply state what this capital fundraise will “buy” you in terms of a few headline business proof points (e.g.

Cap Table 211

Cap Table Seed Stage Valuation Dilution 211

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JULY 26, 2022

As we build and grow, I get a crash course in every domain of business – Product Development 101, Digital Marketing 101, Hiring 101 and so forth. There are both hard and soft skills that coincide with each of these areas and it’s a whirlwind to keep pace. This keeps things interesting, challenging, humbling and rewarding.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley Later Stage Early Stage Founder 156

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AUGUST 5, 2014

Culture bleeds right into our product, our relationships with customers, and our potential impact on the world. We started the process of building our company culture early, before we hired any employees, by writing down our desired values. Hiring: We look for people oriented towards (even obsessed with) learning and growth.

Cofounder 307

Cofounder Startup SCRUM Seed Stage 307

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APRIL 16, 2015

Get a working version of the product. The reason why hiring a technical co-founder or someone else in role X seems like a milestone is because investors might actually have questions about whether the team can be successful. For a lot of products, everyone will believe that you can build a product that can do X or Y.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Cofounder Early Stage Startup 120

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FEBRUARY 19, 2015

I called the recruiter running the search and told him I was going to step down and hire a CEO. So, in order to hire a CEO, we have to give someone their first shot at the job.” I’ve seen many companies with great products die because a great product is not necessarily a great business. Advice to a First-Time CEO.

Founder 120

Founder Startup Cofounder Business Model 120