article thumbnail

Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

Engineer 198
article thumbnail

Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. We’re building a supercomputer.”

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

The VP of Engineering says, “well we don’t have the resources or time, and as long as you know we could build better computers then you guys, why don’t you tell us the details about your computers.” Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Help them?!!

article thumbnail

Scaling is Hard, Case Study: TripAdvisor

Seeing Both Sides

Chatting with CEO and cofounder Kaufer this week, I was reminded of the fact that the company started with a very different business model in mind. I first met Steve when he was VP of Engineering at Centerline software, a software development tools startup, and I was a junior in college. Big Data meets travel…in 2000.