article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Thats an important job, for sure, and Ive been called upon to do it from time to time. So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering.

CTO 168
article thumbnail

One Startup’s Story: The Evolution Of An Outsourcing Strategy

ReadWriteStart

As a one-man founder bootstrapping the business, this allowed me to hire a team for much less money. Then, in the evening – as the team returned from their lunch – I would concentrate on working with them in real time over Skype on building our product. Contract Remote Teams On A Per Project Basis.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: About the author

Startup Lessons Learned

(Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996).

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. Beware the new hire who has "extensive experience" in startups or big companies - using a different growth driver. Take a look and let me know what you think.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

As a last disclaimer, please consult the definition of the word hacker if youre not familiar with the controversies surrounding that term.) Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Just change it.

article thumbnail

How To Build a Web Development Team Without Technical Expertise

www.collegemogul.com

We spent a lot of time asking everyone we knew if they knew anyone who would be looking to intern with a startup. We’ve had some success with hiring interns for fashion design and editorial work, so we were hoping to replicate that with a coder, even in basic HTML, CSS and PHP. On a bootstrapped budget free is great.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: Why PHP won

Startup Lessons Learned

At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Although this was annoying for sysadmins, security consultants, and language purists (and for those who had proprietary modules that couldnt be bundled), it was a huge boon for developers.

PHP 166