Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Legal Officer.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

“Lean” is great in the early days but if you discover an attractive market opportunity you need to get “fat” really quickly or somebody else will. And the “stay lean” argument isn’t only good for entrepreneurs, it can be good for VCs, too. Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

Being relatively a new service trend in today’s tech-driven world, CTO-as-a-Service (CaaS) is notably gaining its momentum. Though CTO as a traditional full-time position exists for decades, some companies do not feel they need a technology executive. Ideal scenario assumes there’s a CTO in house. Early-stage startups.

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Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

You might get a bunch of inbound emails from other press and partners, and all of these things can contribute to a feeling that you’re on your way to getting tons of traffic. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He He was my role model at Convergent, mentor at Ardent and partner at E.piphany.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

If the founding team is non-technical and you can’t figure out whether you are being screwed by your developers or whether your potential new CTO is amazing, a tech advisor can help by joining you in interviews and reviewing commits. You’ll need to keep hiring tech guys. And sometimes it’s super ambiguous.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Call it facts for hire. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. But I don’t think so.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He argued that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. Ask anybody what a software developer does and they can give you the one-sentence “makes software” answer. Finding someone to partner with isn’t easy.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. Vlad is also the CEO at DarwinApps , a software development shop.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. List key partners and resources you will need, and then list your core team as well as their roles.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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. This is one of the bedrock practices of any lean startup , and so its a common piece of advice I give out.

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. In Meebo’s case, for example, I was lucky enough to partner up with Elaine and Sandy. No looking for partnerships (who’s going to partner with you anyway?). I need money for the servers. No phone system. No legal muck.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

The negativity either impacted investment funding (venture capital fell off a cliff in 2009) or the customers they were targeted as was the case for Untitled Partners who were building a platform for fractional art ownership. We were obviously wrong about Untitled Partners’ ability to grow through the subsequent downturn. #19

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Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

” Our featured speaker was Caroline Cummings, the VP of Business Development at Palo Alto Software. How do you know whether that business partner is good for this pitching process? In my first company my business partner and I had put in $100,000, $50,000 each. This is why we love the lean startup methodology.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Software Review Due Diligence Exit Strategy 60

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! Or, rather, more offensively to Facebook and Google employees, less offensive to.NET developers, though the underlying message is the same.). As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. Expensify Blog. Some additional comments at the end.

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Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? They are many more examples.

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Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2021

Ultimately, the company partnered with the City of Los Angeles , and as Eren recalls, "seven days after the original handshake and launch into a scheduling website, we helped launch Dodger Stadium, which was the single largest mass vaccination site in the country." They pivoted to monitoring patients for COVID, then testing. EB : Yeah.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Turkey Los Angeles California 60

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 21, 2016

It turned out that a lot of talented developers, designers, product managers, and entrepreneurs found that really compelling, and now hundreds of them have jumped in and started swimming. Many of them have been carried on by the cities, counties or states we partnered with. He had part time help from one or two of the other fellows.

America 48

America Government CTO Hire San Francisco 48