mashable.com
MAY 9, 2011
Hiring the wrong person for key company positions can cost a business thousands — or tens of thousands — of dollars and man hours. This is especially true when it comes to tech companies hiring the wrong chief technology officer. Leadership Abilities Are A Must It’s natural to want a tech savvy and competent CTO.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
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. For eBay, this is caused by the incredible network effects of their business (so-called demand-side increasing returns and supply-side increasing returns).
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
For example, one angel investor reportedly invested in several hundred social networking ventures employing this philosophy. That being said, I do see problems with the conventional wisdom especially in the valley with your technical vision, which then creates economic problems. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 7, 2008
Customers found it confusing and it turned out to be at odds with our fundamental value proposition (which really requires an independant IM network). Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake. So we had to completely throw that code away, including all of its beatiful tests and specs. Talk about waste.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 14, 2008
This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 18, 2008
Pick a similar product that they do use, and ask them "who was the first person you know who started using [social networking, mobile phones, plasma TV, instant messaging.]? For companies in the early-adopter phase, you can play "the earlyvangelist game" whenever a customer turns out to be too mainstream for your product.
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.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
73 
Let's personalize your content