Boston, CTO Hire, Hiring and Metrics

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."

CTO

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire

Marketing Your Startup: A Billion-Dollar Company’s First Marketer Reflects Back

View from Seed

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.

Marketing

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean

Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: About the author

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Eric, I landed upon your blog when I was searching for the path to CTO a couple of months back and I have been a frequent to the site since then. Your "startup-lessons-learned" are very valuable. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO

Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Customer Development

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Audience

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

Lessons Learned: Ideas. Code. Data. Implement. Measure. Learn

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&# “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&#

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC

Lessons Learned: Great open source scalability tools from Danga

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Open Source

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

SEM

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Fear is the mind-killer

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. Im an ex-Googler, and now a CTO of a small company with lots of talented people ([link] I discovered your site not long ago, and I am learning a lot from it. where an initial bad impression affects a significantly larger percentage of potential customers.

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Whatever its purpose, try measuring it only at the level that you care about.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

Waves of technology platforms

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right.

San Francisco

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean

On deployment

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Lessons Learned: Why PHP won

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.

PHP

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco

How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Test-Driven Development as andon cord

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC

Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile

Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Joel is focused on the fact that in many environments, programmers are considered "just the hired help" akin to manual labor, and not treated properly. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

How to Usability Test your Site for Free

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Question 2: If your product has areas where people read and then different areas where people interact, are there ways to do metrics to determine where people spend their time? Were looking to metrics to determine how users interact with our product.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

As a shoestring entrepreneur with a SaaS (well, not really, but sort of) offering that we present to very large companies (think 10K+), I love your common sense suggestions about metrics and testing. My background isnt metrics, but we came to it as a matter of practicality. 4) More posts about metrics, scaling, and online games.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lessons Learned: Greasemonkey compiler

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Not crossing the chasm

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Distribution

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

You don't need as many tools as you think

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I used to think a giant flat-panel screen that broadcast our companys key metrics would be what was required to get everyone to pay attention to them. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The lean startup comes to Stanford

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup

Thoughts on scientific product development

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Take a look and let me know what you think.

Product Development

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product

StartUpRoar

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Trending Sources

Marketing Your Startup: A Billion-Dollar Company’s First Marketer Reflects Back

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Lessons Learned: About the author

Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Lessons Learned: Ideas. Code. Data. Implement. Measure. Learn

Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Lessons Learned: Great open source scalability tools from Danga

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Fear is the mind-killer

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Waves of technology platforms

On deployment

Lessons Learned: Why PHP won

How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Lessons Learned: Test-Driven Development as andon cord

Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

How to Usability Test your Site for Free

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Lessons Learned: Greasemonkey compiler

Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Not crossing the chasm

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

You don't need as many tools as you think

Lessons Learned: The lean startup comes to Stanford

Thoughts on scientific product development

Stay Connected