View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Now it’s time to discuss the “where”. As a seed-stage company, it is understandable to have a nascent (or non-existent) product and a barebone team relative to the great ambition of the company. Once you get to this part of the pitch, investors are trying to get a few things out of this slide: The “people roadmap”.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You hire people who look good on paper. So one of the surest signs you’ve hired a leader is the willingness of his or her former team to re-assemble. After 6 months – you know. You REALLY know.

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View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Traction is a biweekly podcast where founders share the creative or unusual things they did during the seed stage to make early progress. Founders from LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , Behance , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show. How did both these companies come into being at the same time?

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Business Plan Blog

AUGUST 20, 2013

However, the biggest mistake that a non-tech entrepreneur launching a tech business is to neglect bringing on a tech savvy co-founder on the management team. In order to be a successful tech startup, the team must consist of a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) level member to help with the technology plan. CTO Employee (Salary).

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View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2016

Ask a founder of a growing startup what they need most, and you’ll often get an answer along the lines of, “We need great people, and we need them fast.”. Founders need to make sure the quality of the startup’s offerings remains high and provide adequate sales and service support for prospective customers and new users.

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Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

The technical mastermind behind Replay is Brian Hackett (CTO, co-founder) who has been thinking about and working on this concept for a long time… in fact, his PhD at Stanford 10+ years ago laid the foundation for Replay. You can learn much more about the product, the company, its mission and values, what’s ahead, etc.

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blog.captainrecruiter.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Technical Co-Founders Are A Myth. Two years ago I got the bug to do an online recruiting startup and I began the hunt to find a technical co-founder - a software engineer who works for no cash - to help me build my dream website. I learned something: technical co-founders are a myth. Captain Recruiter.

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rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard. Yesterday, Michael Pope posted an article titled Technical Cofounders Are a Myth. He begins by explaining how he arrived at his conclusion: I began the hunt to find a technical co-founder – a software engineer who works for no cash – to help me build my dream website.

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Austin Startup

AUGUST 19, 2018

Why Corporate Innovation Fails Design Sprints Done Right: Creating Lasting Change User-centered design is critical in making or breaking consumer technologies, but sometimes, on small product teams, day-to-day needs can get in the way of larger, longer term goals and solutions that resonate with your customer can’t manage to get off the launch pad.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 6, 2015

by Tal Segalov, CTO & co-founder of Mintigo. Last year, Twitter announced that it would unveil its Buy Button in the first quarter of 2015, cementing the role social commerce will play in the way businesses must market their products to consumers. Hire the right marketing team.

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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."

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blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Chris OMeara Main | Probing Code Quality » 01/31/2010 Startup CTO: Could It Work? A CEO friend of mine recently asked my opinion about Tony Karrers Startup CTO or Developer article. I think the part time CTO could work. A few had the title CTO but they all fit the technical rock star and hacker profile.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus. He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

Our industry just took one big step towards legitimacy with the hiring of renowned media exec Ynon Kreiz to run Maker Studios. This followed an investment late last year by Time Warner in the company in a round totaling $36 million , led by Rachel Lam , head of their investment group. Production costs have fallen more than 90%.

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View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. Belief #1: The best time to invest is early. And by early, we mean pre-traction.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2017

Guest post by Jennifer Maerz, Program Chair of Lean Startup Co. For eight years, our flagship conference has focused on sharing stories and lessons of putting Lean Startup’s entrepreneurial methodology into practice. 31 ( limited to the first 200 Gold Passholders.) 31 ( limited to the first 200 Gold Passholders.) Sign up for free here.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 Finding Good Developers in Los Angeles? Im part of a CTO group that meets once a month to discuss various topics. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

One great solution I see is to hire an outstanding CFO who runs both. “We’re all equal co-founders and we don’t care about titles.&# Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. .&# But they aren’t the COO.

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www.huffingtonpost.com

MAY 10, 2011

We sell the winning designs to customers in the form of personalized wedding invitations, Christmas cards , and other stationery and photo card products. Ive occasionally worked with executive recruiters, for example in hiring a CTO for my first company, Eve.com. This time, I decided to handle the process myself.

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www.allthingsdistributed.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Main July 11, 2007 The Different CTO Roles I was putting together a short panel presentation on the roleof a Chief Technology Officer in corporate innovation and I once again realized that there is quite a bit of confusion around the role of the CTO. The first CTOs came onto the scene during the late eighties.A

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Gust

AUGUST 23, 2012

Startups usually begin with one or two founders who play many roles. The lead founder is likely to wear the hats of Founder, Chairman, CEO, President, CFO, CRO and CMO, while a co-founder may well be CTO, Chief Product Officer, and Programming Team Lead.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 20, 2022

How does a newly hired Chief Technology Officer (CTO) find and grow the islands of innovation inside a large company? How not to waste your first six months as a new CTO thinking you’re making progress when the status quo is working to keep you at bay? But this is the first time he was the CTO of a company this size.

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YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 21, 2016

by Andrew Ostashen, co-founder of Vulsec. When an organization is within the startup phase, the first thing on their mind is “How do we get our product to market as fast as possible?” followed up by “How do we scale our product(s) the fastest and most efficient way possible?”. Do we have an internet connected product/app?

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The Next Web

AUGUST 12, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Christian Reber, CEO and co-founder of Berlin-based 6Wunderkinder. It’s part three of a series, cross-posted from his own blog , in which he draws on his experience to offer advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in Europe and beyond. I launched a product, and everything went wrong.

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Cofounder CTO Hire Startup Europe 119

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? With mobile development agencies and product incubators on the rise and more corporate “labs” spinning out each day, there’s no shortage of talent to help you build the next great Web or mobile app. Still, a product is nothing without scalability.

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Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

SoCal CTO

MAY 15, 2009

Social networking sites and microblogs are used not only to build company brands, but to foster productivity; social media tools help build communities around the question, "What are you working on?" Formerly, he was Managing Director of both Product Management and of Business Development at Los Angeles Times Interactive.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

The first version of the product was based on an architectural approach that didn’t aptly satisfy all players in the ecosystem and wasn’t flexible enough. At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO. At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. Let’s talk about your product or let’s look at your financial projections. You’re slitting that stuff?

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BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Thanks to all of the amazing founders, advisors, co-investors, corporate partners, and others that helped make 2018 an amazing year. To that point, we are most excited when our founders are able to go from slide deck to product-market fit and Series A and beyond. We are truly grateful for your support.

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The Next Web

MARCH 10, 2013

This is a guest post by Chris Hollindale, co-founder and CTO of Hasty. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably measuring everything you possibly can about your business and your product. With RescueTime, I get all the benefits of being able to measure and improve my productivity, without any data entry pain at all.

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The Next Web

DECEMBER 21, 2013

Danny Boice is the co-founder and CTO of Speek – a 500 Startups-funded startup that let’s users do conference calls with a simple link rather than using phone numbers and PINs. Problematic team members can spread their crappiness with surprising quickness, decimating culture and productivity in the process.

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Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

Whatever the inspiration or relation may be, the naming of your business is one of the most important parts of becoming a CEO. 1- I credit my co-founder. I credit my co-founder Eric Frothingham with coming up with our name. Her picture is my office as an added reminder of the woman I consider our real founder.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

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Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 15, 2018

grow into international markets, other industry verticals, and other product lines). My co-founders and I wanted a name that would reflect the incredible ambition of our mission: “to build the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world”. I think really hard when I’m naming a new startup.

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www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

The most common comment in this long and complicated MBA Mondays series on Employee Equity is the question of how much equity should you grant when you make a hire. For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula. So the VP Product gets an equity grant of ((87.5k/25mm) 

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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? ) He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). Eric, love the blog.

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Sophia Perl of Wisdom

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Note to self, this event is not for alpha products with no customers. What key hires do you need? The business model for residential solar panel company: contract with customer, local rebates, and tax benefits. The business model for residential solar panel company: contract with customer, local rebates, and tax benefits.

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