SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2013

Delivery of code/product that clearly has not been tested. How strong is product management? Architecture All startups will make a lot of changes and scale the product as they move along. They need to take a critical role in the strategic direction helping the business navigate critical product/technology choices.

Fractional CTO 219

Fractional CTO Developer Founder Architecture 219

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." It is almost never the case that you are building an MVP to "show" to an investor the product itself.

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Do you transact immediately or on delivery of some product or service? Existing People Capabilities - what capabilities such as graphic design, user interaction, product manager, QA do you already have access to? Are there specs?

Developer 396

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 396

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Do you transact immediately or on delivery of some product or service? Existing People Capabilities - what capabilities such as graphic design, user interaction, product manager, QA do you already have access to? Are there specs?

Developer 384

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 384

SoCal CTO

MAY 13, 2014

Through this he defined aspects like “deep dives into our marketing strategy” and “product feedback and product strategy.” In Bob’s post, he tells startup founders to get smart on product design, software architecture and development process.

Advisory Board 241

Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup 241

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

This overview (executive summary) needs to include: Product and Business What is the product? How does the product solve a pain? What are related products/companies? What product, market testing have you done so far, if any? You need to send us an overview of what you are doing. Who's the customer? Are there specs?

Fractional CTO 264

Fractional CTO CTO Hire NDA Technical Review 264

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

This overview (executive summary) needs to include: Product and Business What is the product? How does the product solve a pain? What are related products/companies? What product, market testing have you done so far, if any? You need to send us an overview of what you are doing. Who's the customer? Are there specs?

Fractional CTO 259

Fractional CTO CTO Hire NDA Technical Review 259

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build. What's going to go wrong?

Technical Cofounder 219

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Developers Software Development 219

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

" One was an enterprise software product. Would it take more work to sell the enterprise product than they could make on it? In both cases, the founder and I brainstormed on ways to shift the product in order to get closer to what I perceived as something that would be great. Neither felt like a slam dunk.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 9, 2009

The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. Of course, we’ll also discuss the details of the product itself. A lot of the product discussion feeds off the answers to this conversation. I always take a very different approach in early conversations.

Software Developers 292

Software Developers Software Development Developer Software 292

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

A common, but really frustrating, situation is when a startup founder wants to hold back details about the business and product to protect themselves. The technical person will begin to pelt you with questions about the business, product and technical challenges. As a technical person, I’m sitting there trying to solve a problem.

Fractional CTO 211

Fractional CTO Conversion NDA Early Stage 211

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

Most often at the earliest point in the life of a startup, the dominant need is certainly to produce product to get something in the market, get funding, etc. I understand the desire for hiring someone who is going to product product. How are we going to manage the product roadmap? What do we build in-house or outsource?

CTO 225

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 225

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Why Product Managers Wear Sneakers - Steve Blank , September 2, 2010 I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. Except they won’t be called Product Managers.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2007

Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). Conduct meetings to ensure understanding and alignment around market opportunities, business model, sources of revenue, immediate needs, growth, product opportunities, and ultimately to establish business and product priorities.

Fractional CTO 231

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Early Stage 231

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. You’ll gauge people’s excitement level for the product and for various features. You’ll discover flaws and hopefully correct them. You’ll learn a lot more about the sector/industry. You’ll refine your sales and investor pitch.

NDA 211

NDA Stealth Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement 211

SoCal CTO

MAY 27, 2010

You can follow the link above for more details, but the basic idea is that most startup founders have a pretty good understanding of the basics of what they want to do and a vision for the product. And there are all sorts of different kinds of technical people who might help with getting that product to happen.

CTO Hire 170

CTO Hire Developer Founder Startup 170

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. You’ll gauge people’s excitement level for the product and for various features. You’ll discover flaws and hopefully correct them. You’ll learn a lot more about the sector/industry. You’ll refine your sales and investor pitch.

NDA 198

NDA Stealth Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement 198

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

Hire a Product Design Lead First Nailing that elusive technical co-founder Things to Avoid When Recruiting Co-founders Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard Need a Technical Co-founder?

Technical Cofounder 211

Technical Cofounder Cofounder CTO Hire Los Angeles 211

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I have been through many months with them but because of lack of funds, I spent lot of time doing non-technical work for first 4-5 months, spending time with them on putting pitches for investors, cash flows, budgets, writing business plans, product prototype setups etc.

CTO 167

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 167

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I have been through many months with them but because of lack of funds, I spent lot of time doing non-technical work for first 4-5 months, spending time with them on putting pitches for investors, cash flows, budgets, writing business plans, product prototype setups etc.

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 150

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

My Obsession With The Product - Feld Thoughts , May 3, 2010 For some reason I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately. The Yin and Yang of Product and Engineering - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 22, 2010 For a tech company, product and engineering are the heart and soul of the business.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

They tend to know the operations side of a software business well enough to be the one overseeing deploys, crafting the infrastructure plans, and monitoring the health of the product. They tend to understand the product management side of the product well enough to guide the technology in a complementary way.

CTO Hire 150

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Architecture 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

I would agree that Apples product design would suggest that it aims at Time Poor buyers. However, the ubiquity of the iPod including use by many folks who certainly would fall in the Time Rich category (lots of time to play with music) suggests that their product and marketing appeals to both segments.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 18, 2010

More Visible Networking Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles – Cliff Allen Los Angeles Technology Connector – Kurt Daradics Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouhi Attorney and Startup Business Advisor – Aaron Shechet Negative Customer Acquisition Costs - Creative Startup Marketing Ideas (..)

Los Angeles 225

Los Angeles Revenue Southern California Social Network 225

SoCal CTO

MARCH 16, 2010

Delivery of code/product that clearly has not been tested. We try to move on to find the actual A players. Symptoms So what do I hear about on these calls? Frequently missed deadlines. Last minute scope cutting to make deadlines. Marking bugs as fixed that aren’t fixed. Massive overtime. No communication between developers. No clear leader.

Developer 179

Developer Los Angeles Software Developers Software Development 179

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

He had a partially built product. In my experience, it’s naive to think you can just “get developers to build the product” although it does sometimes work. Understand where they were in terms of being able to pay or was this equity-only (sweat equity only). He needed some kind of CTO and as well Developers.

Technical Cofounder 241

Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Equity Sweat Equity 241

SoCal CTO

APRIL 8, 2010

Death By Competitive Analysis - Steve Blank , March 1, 2010 Trading emails with a startup CEO building an iPhone app, I asked him why potential customers would buy his product. How do you get press and the blogosphere talking about your product? You might be surprised why this is the case. In response he sent me a competitive analysis.

Software Review 150

Software Review Startup PR Exit Strategy 150

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 14, 2009

you can get to know Mark a bit more in my post Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller ). Just saw a great post by Mark Geller - Developers wanted… in Los Angeles, U.S.A. Mark tells us: there is a lot of demand for developers right here in L.A. who would love to talk with you.

Software Developers 150

Software Developers Software Development Software Developer 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

And I would add to his list that part of it might be time available to help product definition, pursue market opportunities, early sales, raise funds, etc. Knowing a lot of CTO founders, I can tell you that Roger is fairly accurate in his assessment of the desire of CTOs to find the right cofounder to be the business side.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Cofounder CTO Hire Founder 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Do you know the relative effort to build your prototype or minimum viable product? If you come up to a programmer and just ask them to help you build your product. Don't try to hunting programmers until you've pushed this as far as you can on paper and get early customers. Don't scare off your prey. You are an outsider.

Fractional CTO 349

Fractional CTO Southern California Startup Mobile 349

SoCal CTO

APRIL 9, 2013

And you will want to make sure you see what the particular designers have done, samples of their work product, their process, etc. If you need user interface and/or graphic design, that''s a slightly different selection process. Some of what I have below applies. Make sure you know who will be doing the actual work.

Web Development 204

Web Development Web Developer Los Angeles 204

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller SEO for Startups Startup Version 1.0 Social Media for Service Professionals LearnTrends Speakers and Topics Accounced Tags not Folders - LinkedIn Saved Profiles Product Management for Startups in Los Angeles – S. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller SEO for Startups Startup Version 1.0 Social Media for Service Professionals LearnTrends Speakers and Topics Accounced Tags not Folders - LinkedIn Saved Profiles Product Management for Startups in Los Angeles – S. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Do you know the relative effort to build your prototype or minimum viable product? If you come up to a programmer and just ask them to help you build your product. Don't try to hunting programmers until you've pushed this as far as you can on paper and get early customers. Don't scare off your prey. You are an outsider.

Fractional CTO 296

Fractional CTO Southern California Startup Mobile 296

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller SEO for Startups Startup Version 1.0 Social Media for Service Professionals LearnTrends Speakers and Topics Accounced Tags not Folders - LinkedIn Saved Profiles Product Management for Startups in Los Angeles – S. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Search Engineer 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 13, 2007

Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller SEO for Startups Startup Version 1.0 Social Media for Service Professionals LearnTrends Speakers and Topics Accounced Tags not Folders - LinkedIn Saved Profiles Product Management for Startups in Los Angeles – S. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Internet 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 28, 2007

Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller SEO for Startups Startup Version 1.0 Social Media for Service Professionals LearnTrends Speakers and Topics Accounced Tags not Folders - LinkedIn Saved Profiles Product Management for Startups in Los Angeles – S. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Mobile 150