SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Often you can't tell if something like a search engine or matching algorithm is really going to have better results until you use it. As Steve Blank likes to say: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model The unfortunate reality is - an MVP is not the above!

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

Find a lawyer and someone who does CTO searches for VC backed companies in your area. The search person likely won’t charge you if you have a strong enough background, i.e., later would provide value to them. For me – I would definitely start by soul-searching – do I want to still be involved? Don’t make the same mistake.)

CTO 167

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 167

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 2, 2013

Then you search for the people who were in marketing there early on. The challenge is that LinkedIn is not that great with finding people who were at early-stage startups. So the way I would do it is to find examples of specific startups that have grown up locally and who marketed similar to how you plan to market.

Startup 259

Startup Early Stage Incubator Los Angeles 259

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

Find a lawyer and someone who does CTO searches for VC backed companies in your area. The search person likely won’t charge you if you have a strong enough background, i.e., later would provide value to them. For me – I would definitely start by soul-searching – do I want to still be involved? Don’t make the same mistake.)

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 28, 2010

My flippant comment was, “If you do a Google search for Los Angeles web developer, you’ll find a LOT of people and firms.” Some other things he tried: LinkedIn – searched for people, but gave up pretty quickly as it felt like a needle in a haystack. In fact, after a bit he gave up.

Los Angeles 167

Los Angeles Web Development Web Developer 167

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 7, 2009

As an example, I did that as a search on SoCal Tech Central and Software Development Companies really didn't come up with much. What that means is that while Southern California is a vibrant software development location, when you look around for Software Development Companies in Southern California, often you come up fairly empty.

Southern California 150

Southern California Software Developers Software Development California 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

Right now (more are expected soon) it provides: Buzz API - Google Buzz provides developers with a powerful set of API endpoints for searching, reading, and updating post content and metadata. Custom Search API - Google Custom Search enables you to search over a slice of the web, such as your own website, or a collection of websites.

API 175

API Metadata Artificial Inteligence Algorithm 175

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 13, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Internet 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

They are in a space where there is lots of search traffic, but they didn't have anything particularly interesting to say about how they were going to get ranked. And to me, there seems to be a lot of confusion by founders of startups around search engine optimization (SEO) and how it works for a startup. This can help juice your SEO.

SEO 150

SEO Startup Search Matching 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Networking Southern California Los Angeles 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Twitter - You can run searches for various types of techie terms being used in a given geography. It's a bit hard to use for this kind of request, but I would certainly go ask everyone I know to introduce me to programmers they know. And then use them to get to even more. Follow them and reply to introduce yourself.

Fractional CTO 349

Fractional CTO Southern California Startup Mobile 349

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Open Source 150

Open Source Business Model Technical Cofounder Southern California 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Second Stop LinkedIn Advanced people search in LinkedIn is a beautiful thing. Worth looking through these for some interesting parallels. Again look for founders. And save names of of companies that match your criteria.

Founder 301

Founder Startup Acquisition Business Model 301

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Twitter - You can run searches for various types of techie terms being used in a given geography. It's a bit hard to use for this kind of request, but I would certainly go ask everyone I know to introduce me to programmers they know. And then use them to get to even more. Follow them and reply to introduce yourself.

Fractional CTO 296

Fractional CTO Southern California Startup Mobile 296

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 21, 2008

Google now shows me an option to push things in my search results to the top. Basically the only people who will spend time on this is people trying to improve their search rankings. It's an interesting choice. Doesn't it seem like it's inviting problems. The rest of us signal with lots of other things like links, bookmarking, etc.

Restful 150

Restful Search 150

SoCal CTO

JUNE 15, 2011

However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done. As one review put it: Searching by company to find connections you might have is arduous at best, and in my mind, basically useless. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs.

Viral 331

Viral Startup Networking Social Network 331

SoCal CTO

JUNE 15, 2011

However, funny enough, I don't see the job search and showing you who you know at the company as being particularly well done. As one review put it: Searching by company to find connections you might have is arduous at best, and in my mind, basically useless. The purpose of Branchout is helping people to network their way to jobs.

Viral 323

Viral Startup Networking Social Network 323

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 25, 2007

After hearing at a recent CTO Forum meeting from Siderean about their relational navigation technology and various discussions with other folks on search, it's seeming like entity extraction is coming up everywhere. Today I saw John Udell's post Entity extraction everywhere.

Search 150

Search Technology 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In fact, you can get a good idea of these various things by just searching on Google for "eHarmony of" startup. It's really just a simple filtered search. They describe the company as the eHarmony of careers, clothes, jobs, college, tutoring services, doctors, service companies, investments, etc.

Algorithm 196

Algorithm Matching Los Angeles Angel Investor 196

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 26, 2009

You can find these by following my tweets at: @tonykarrer But it's probably better to use twitter search to keep track of everything using the conference tag: #elearnconf That way you can see all of the tweets, hopefully provide thoughts. FYI – I'll also plan to do a wrap up over the weekend following the presentation.

Search 150

Search 150

SoCal CTO

MAY 1, 2007

I've worked with several businesses that were essentially based on driving traffic via search engine optimization (SEO). Bottom line - if you are basing your business on high rankings via organic search, there's pretty incredible risk. I just saw a Forbes article talking about Google Hell - getting placed in the secondary index.

SEO 150

SEO Search Engineer 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

In addition, I do a few consulting projects on the side, in the areas of product strategy, search engine optimization, and intellectual property. We have a working alpha version now and are planning to launch a beta in the next 6-8 weeks. Fascinating that you are going against the trend of trying to make everything a web application.

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 13, 2009

What do they search for? They need someone who does consulting, hand holding, cracks the whip a bit, gets the stuff in place, knows different tricks and techniques. Of course, this normally is a bit more complicated than just the technical aspects. What's their specific niche? Who's the audience? Where are they online?

Los Angeles 167

Los Angeles Social Media Media Audience 167

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 25, 2007

One Page Networking Tool One of the best things I've seen done by a person doing a search was to provide folks he knew with a one pager that roughly contained: Background - two sentences Job Sought - two sentences Company Characteristics - geography, size, industry, etc. So the key question is: How can I leverage my network?

Networking 183

Networking Search Naming Hiring 183

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 4, 2009

This hot list is based on various social signals of what people are writing about, reading, bookmarking, searching, etc. Last month we Launched Los Angeles Tech and in the announcement we provide the Hot List for the first half of January 2009. You can go to the Hot List post to see what was hot then.

San Diego 159

San Diego Los Angeles Southern California Aggregator 159

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

channels (search, social, viral, new media), cost-efficient distribution He also points a fair bit to Eric Ries – The lean startup. Great stuff. I'm sure I'll be coming back to this and pointing people to it.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

SoCal CTO

JUNE 10, 2008

I did a quick search and didn't find many blog posts mentioning that specific event. The spark for this post is that I'm going to go to Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum on Saturday. I've presented there before and it's a good group. But there's no attendee list in site. I can't find them listed on any kind of social site.

Social Media 150

Social Media Southern California Media California 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 20, 2009

In other words, it uses what is happening: with the content out in the network with searches that land on the site, what happens when people visit the site, and various other kinds of behaviors. One of the more interesting new features is that the site now takes into account social signals.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles San Diego Viral Metrics 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 6, 2008

I have a right click option in my browser to search LinkedIn for anyone by name. I always make sure that there's at least 3 people attending that I want to meet prior to sending any notes. I had one situation where I sent a note only to find that was the only person I wanted to meet. Then I couldn't back out.

Networking 191

Networking Search Naming Conversion 191

SoCal CTO

APRIL 20, 2010

Let me go back and do my classic search for "eHarmony of" startup and find a few examples to use: People to Projects (Managers) People to Jobs (Hiring Managers) Students to Tutors Each of these involve matching people to people (I’ve stayed away from content matching in these examples). What do I mean by this?

Matching 150

Matching Hiring Restful Management 150

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 31, 2011

Maybe you are simply doing smart searches on behalf of job seekers and coming back with those job suggestions. What this allows is one of the more common early approaches for startups. Basically you do things manually at the start. Likely there is lots of job information already available. to source potential candidates.

Marketing 204

Marketing Matching Algorithm Bootstrapping 204

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 31, 2011

Maybe you are simply doing smart searches on behalf of job seekers and coming back with those job suggestions. What this allows is one of the more common early approaches for startups. Basically you do things manually at the start. Likely there is lots of job information already available. to source potential candidates.

Marketing 196

Marketing Matching Algorithm Bootstrapping 196