SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

CTO 167

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 167

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire Equity Vesting 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Founders vs. Early Employees To help with this discussion, let me start with a definition of "early employee." The first few people into a startup are on a spectrum of founder vs. early employee. Founders are likely not paid for a long time and have a sizeable equity percentage for early risk and having the concept.

Early Stage 391

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YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 18, 2020

by Joseph Heller, CEO & Founder of The/Studio Technologies. As a company grows, corporate leaders must become fixated on the stock price, internal politics and compliance. I met with the president of the men’s group (a billion-dollar business by itself), the group’s CTO and some of their support team.

Fractional CTO 147

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Each co-founder should get equity for value, based on these key variables: Lived a key role in a previous startup.

Equity 238

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 238

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Things like “ participating preferred stock &# in legalese unsurprisingly never actually call out, “hey, this is the participating preferred language.&# We got a3x participating liquidation preference with interest (not participating with a 3x cap, but 3x participating. Investors own 25%, the founders own 75%.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

The Next Web

JANUARY 24, 2014

At the same time we have several culturally-driven attitudes holding us back. So let’s take stock: What do we offer? Think of Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon), Guido van Rossem (founder of Python programming language and senior engineer at Dropbox) or the more senior Gerard Kleisterlee (chairman of Vodafone). Not in my view.

Netherlands 143

Netherlands Technical Review Stock Silicon Valley 143

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte.

Technical Review 418

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

At one of our initial board meetings we had agreed on the general principle of an advisory board and put together an overall stock budget to compensate advisors. One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems.

Advisory Board 260

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thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees. The part that I’d like to zero in on is when you’ve got a high growth company what are some of the best practices out there to distribute equity to the founders, advisors, and employees? Equity for Founders. Marketing Intern. Office Space.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Each co-founder should get equity for value, based on these key variables: Lived a key role in a previous startup.

Equity 120

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 120

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts. Always seek input.

Advisory Board 365

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The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. is frequently granted ownership significantly less than that of the founders. However, at the very early stage, they are taking as much risk with their future as the founders. Engineer #1?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2017

31 ( limited to the first 200 Gold Passholders.) Side Note: Eric and Marilyn will be doing a webcast as a preview to their workshop on Oct 11. Sign up for free here.

Lean 108

Lean Programming San Francisco Cofounder 108

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

How many founders are too many? You are the founder, the visionary, the uber-entrepreneur. Hire everyone you need as an employee. VCs don’t fund sole founders and, if you are alone, you’ve either got too much ego or you can’t convince someone to join you. Two” – You have to have three founders. Sometimes I’m wrong.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Kenya Dilution 143

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. For me that’s definitely the toughest part.

Cofounder 119

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David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve been looking for suggestions for an initial deal structure that is appropriate for the theoretical case of a trusted dev shop putting in $100k in market-value of services over a 6 month period in time. What are the terms of their relationship with the founder? What are the timelines? The discounts? The cliffs? The fine print?

Software Developers 60

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Startup Company Lawyer

MAY 4, 2009

Adeo Ressi , the founding member of TheFunded , recently announced the establishment of TheFunded Founder Institute. The Founder Institute helps founders launch innovative companies by providing training, services, and company-building assignments, such as incorporating the business, filing provision patents, and setting up books and records.

Founder 28

Founder Warrant San Francisco Intellectual Property 28

www.metamorphblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Home About Contact Home About Contact The Metamorphosis Becoming an Entrepreneur, by Matt Mireles Startup Lessons for the Proto-Founder I started SpeakerText in October 2008 during the financial apocalypse. You need a Co-Founder, not an Engineering Bitch. We hired three guys from that batch and paid them in iPhones.

Founder 51

Founder Startup Cofounder Vesting 51

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

A fortnight ago, Boris interviewed Reed Hastings on his business lessons and experience, but now I’m shaking it up with a look at a 26-year-old founder who is disrupting the mobile and social networking spaces: Kik CEO and founder Ted Livingston. At this point it was pure survival,” Livingston says. What’s the secret?

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Mobile 167

www.quora.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Type to Add and Search Questions; Search Topics and People Startups Startup Compensation Entrepreneurship Compensation Stock Options Major Internet Companies Silicon Valley Why is there such a large founder to early employee equity drop-off? The real question here is: why is it fair for founders to get so much more?

Equity 40

Equity Employee Founder Cofounder 40

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. First, a caveat.

Equity 64

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www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

When you're getting started, sweat equity is often a critical component of your negotiating leverage with co-founders, early stage employees and others who aren't paid market wages to help you grow your business. This is the typical way that a founder determines sweat equity: foregone wages.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Founded by former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor and Google App Engine creator Kevin Gibbs, Quip was recognized by Technology Review as one of the “ Breakthrough Technologies of 2014 ” for making it effortless and fruitful to create and edit documents on mobile devices for real-time collaboration.

API 60

API Software Review Technical Review Startup 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

As the conversation began to get down to how much stock and salary we could offer van Dam, we left the barber to finish his work and went to a payphone to call our CEO to confirm the deal. A few days later Gordon became a founder. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He The response from across the country?

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Company Lawyer

MAY 1, 2009

Data is analyzed by: founder/non-founder status, company revenue and headcount, geography, business segment, and number of financing rounds raised. Additional detail is provided on compensation for the Board of Directors, general organizational changes over time and other compensation trends. Head of Technology/CTO 1.19%.

Stock Options 31

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

The first is that it could carry limited inventory in stock because it had limited physical shelf space. So today I’m excited to announce that Upfront Ventures is leading an $8 million round with some amazing co-investors including Founder’s Fund, OATV, Lowercase, High Peaks, Collaborative Fund and many great angel investors.

Technical Review 380

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Nine times out of ten, the meeting ends with them asking me for introductions to VCs. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. and Google. No legal muck.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. If you are a startup looking to hire really excellent people, take notice of.NET on a resume, and ask why it’s there. Expensify Blog. Expense Reports That Don't Suck. Sjoerd Franken.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. 8220; His three things (worth reading his whole post anyway) are set vision/strategy and communicate broadly, recruit/hire/retain top talent, and make sure there’s enough cash in the bank. It’s great advice.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 4, 2018

Increasingly powerful systems cracked open the door for real-time predictive analytics. A world of real-time predictions. For some, the age of “real-time” predictive analytics is here. A simple predictive analysis is your arrival time in Waze. Slow adoption but soaring interest. Data, data, and data.

Analytics 131

Analytics Algorithm Artificial Inteligence Campaign 131