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How Sin-Mei Tsai, Shippo’s VP of Engineering, Defines Code Quality

Version One Ventures

Six weeks ago, we kicked off a new series where we profile an awesome operator in our network to learn about his/her work and contributions to his/her organization and community at large. This time, I am very excited to introduce Sin-Mei Tsai , VP of Engineering at Shippo , a Version One portfolio company.

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Leadership is More Than a Memo

Steve Blank

While Silicon Valley has grown to have global influence, in many ways the cultural leadership from the venture community has dramatically shrunk in the last decade. Ben Wegbreit, the VP of Engineering (one of my mentors and then co-founder of Epiphany), broke his foot skiing just as the company started. The next day?

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Scaling from maker to manager

Version One Ventures

But as the start-up scales and you hire employees, your day-to-day is taken over by more managerial tasks, like hiring and managing people, running company meetings, etc. It’s unusual to hire a non-founder CEO early in a start-up’s life because it will most likely fail. There’s typically little choice for a founder CEO.

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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. .&# I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Context here.)

Engineer 198
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How to Keep Your Job As Your Company Grows

Steve Blank

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing.

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Storably.com – Peer-to-Peer Marketplace For Renting Storage Or Carpark Space

YoungUpstarts

If you’re looking for a space, simply type in an address and find available spaces around it. Kowitt and Gupta then hired a full-time VP of Engineering, Nick Shiftan, who rebuilt the site from scratch. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager.

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Do Job Specs Matter?

Seeing Both Sides

Today's post is brought to you by my friend, Paul Blumenfeld , a recruiter who is one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to hiring processes. Many hiring managers write a job spec that is heavy on wishes and low on real needs. I see two reasons for this discrepancy: Static Specs. that would get the interview.