This is going to be BIG.

MAY 19, 2010

Early stage startups have that task many times over after they receive their first funding. That's why hiring at the stage that our companies tend to be at is a unique proposition.one that can seriously create or destroy a ton of value. We're reversing the model. Why senior level?

CTO Hire 99

CTO Hire Hiring Portfolio Early Stage 99

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

Most large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) and disruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.).

Acquisition 333

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 333

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? The terms “CTO” and “VP Engineering” have such stigmas associated with what they are that I’m sure some people will feel uncomfortable with the definitions I’ve put forward. I’ve heard both arguments from CTO’s.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

A good early-stage CEO needs to be accessible, to be accountable for producing results and should be establishing the cultural norms of the company through direct leadership at all levels. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

I recently wrote a post about why I didn’t think early-stage startups should have COOs. One great solution I see is to hire an outstanding CFO who runs both. Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. .&# and my favorite].

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 14, 2012

To learn more about how your startup can find, hire and keep the top talent and quality workers it needs to succeed, download this free ReadWriteWeb Report: The Talent Wars: Today’s Toughest Startup Challenge. And you need to do it sooner rather than later. So what does it actually take to build a kickass startup team?

Technical Review 159

Technical Review CTO Hire Software Review Startup 159

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Web Startup Lessons Advice from a CTO and Entrepreneur Home About Startup Advice: When to Use a Consulting CTO There are not many to be found. He or she might call himself a “consulting CTO,&# “freelance CTO,&# “on-demand CTO,&# “CTO on call,&# “CTO for hire,&# or just a “technology strategy advisor.&#

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

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.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Technical Cofounder Southern California CTO Hire 150

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

Hila Qu joined Mucker’s Tony Yang for an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) conversation about Product-Led Growth (PLG) for Startups to kickoff the 2023 Mucker Growth Series. The other dimension you need to think about is the product complexity. As an individual user, I have absolutely no interest in using this product myself or testing it out.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

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. How did you address that?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Austin Startup

APRIL 2, 2021

We’re building a SaaS platform for large-scale event organizers, think music festivals, sporting events and even entertainment productions. Event cancellation insurance is one of the worst performing insurance products in the market with loss ratios above 250%. As I mentioned, eve is an event insurtech startup.

Austin 62

Austin CTO Hire Hawaii Hosting 62

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.

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

SoCal CTO

JULY 23, 2012

I seem to encounter a lot of people who want to attach a CTO label to me as I'm the only programmer on the founding team of three. While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit.

CTO Hire 231

CTO Hire Technical Review Developer Software Review 231

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. But that’s a digression.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company. The more senior members you have (say you already have a CEO, CTO, VP marketing, VP Biz Dev, VP Products) then the less options you’ll need and vice versa. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool. That’s normal. This is a shame.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

We are purpose-built to not only invest pre-product but also to help accelerate your path to product-market fit with our decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience along with our active CXO advisory board. Some of these themes include privacy/ML, next gen CMS, intelligent automation, and developer productivity.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

For example: - Having any more “C’s” than the CEO and CTO. Seeing a head of product that isn’t a founder. Most of the time, one becomes a VP because they’ve excelled and have progressed to the point where they are leading a team. Seeing VPs (the more I see, the worse I feel).

CTO Hire 61

CTO Hire Seed Stage Startup Early Stage 61

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

OnlyOnce

MARCH 22, 2016

and 7 companies in 6 cities around the world, producing an impressive 80% hire rate. The participants who have been hired by us and our partner organizations have made impressive contributions to their companies’ businesses and cultures. That’s what I call product-market fit.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Cofounder Programming Equity 48

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

If you’re still in the early stages of your entrepreneur-education/journey, you may even think you need to protect your idea and not share it with anyone. This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast. As an entrepreneur, you think your idea is unique. And convey this in your pitch.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Entrepreneur Homepage Startups Starting a Business Home How-To Guides Startup Basics Business Ideas Business Planning Startup Financing Success Stories Home-Based Business Starting a Business Play Video How to Take a New Product from Just an Idea to a Business (Video). Sweat equity is just one component of early-stage valuation.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. It would be the company where I actually earned the title. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

” Bill Gross, who is one of the Godfathers of the Internet, once told me, “ If you don’t design a product that is 10x better than the competition then you’ll never build anything truly big or amazing.” ” That’s what we’ve set out to build at MakeSpace. 10x the experience.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review Cofounder CTO Hire 380

www.geekwire.com

JULY 10, 2012

According to the Dow Jones research, 43 early-stage funds raised $3.1 Madrona’s new $300 million fund — while the largest in the firm’s history — certainly qualifies in the early-stage group. Cheezburger’s ‘Luddite’ CTO Scott Porad on why his job beats laying railroad ties. 07/01/2012.

Venture Capital 42

Venture Capital Seattle Cofounder Software Engineering 42

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Product and Engineering. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Product and Engineering. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Today, he’s the co-founder and CTO of Artillery , bringing console-quality gaming to the web browser. First Round Capital. The Review. The Review.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Engineer Software Review Part-Time VPE 52

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

I mean, they’re almost like “We need a community because then we can turn them into brand ambassadors and then they’ll sell more product for us.” You know, your product or your content. I’ve got a web product. You may need your product and engineering teams to be involved. What drives them?

Community 55

Community Social Media Africa Kansas City 55

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Product Friday: Monetizing Content is a Product Problem - This is going to be BIG. m the f%*kin’ boss.”. Dec 26, 2009).

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. A bonafide team is the assurance that the idea can be executed and that the business can scale when the time is right. Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Hiring the right people at the right time is key.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

View from Seed

MARCH 22, 2016

This is for the early-stage companies — the entrepreneurs with great ideas and tireless work ethics who feel like they’ve emailed half of the country’s news outlets with nothing but the rare “thanks, but not interested” reply to show for it. Your product launch. The irony hurts. Pitch late. Here three things that never work.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup CTO Hire 120

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. However, at the very early stage, they are taking as much risk with their future as the founders. Every time a startup raises capital, all common shareholders are diluted. Engineer #1?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. Your highest priority right now is hiring the 1 or 2 people that are going to join your company and make a difference. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. No Dave S. =

Seattle 317

Seattle Silicon Valley Technical Review Los Angeles 317

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

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. If we believe in founders enough, we should believe in their potential more than what they could be paying us to build the product.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Languages like Tcl -- which powered Vignette s CMS products in the dotcom heyday -- are now rather unusual in web development. However, Java is not a particularly productive language to work with, and many elements of functionality can be delivered more rapidly in the other languages.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

These categories came from Yonder conference , a conference held to discuss just such challenges and solutions: hiring and onboarding. These categories came from Yonder conference , a conference held to discuss just such challenges and solutions: hiring and onboarding. Hire those you trust. Biggest future challenge: hiring.

Management 152

Management SCRUM CTO Hire Distribution 152

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74