Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

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. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag.

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CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Chris OMeara Main | Probing Code Quality » 01/31/2010 Startup CTO: Could It Work? A CEO friend of mine recently asked my opinion about Tony Karrers Startup CTO or Developer article. I think the part time CTO could work. A few had the title CTO but they all fit the technical rock star and hacker profile.

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Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Cofounder 40

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

Hiring Has Changed: Before the press was a way of generating interest for hiring. Party rounds blew up on a number of startups who found it difficult to get ongoing operational support from investors who didn’t have time or inclination to lean in. Word of mouth spreads faster and sales cycles are shorter.

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Technical Review CTO Hire Finance Stealth 117

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Another area we CEOs often meddle is in sales. Of course we fancy ourselves as the best sales people in the company. Either your head of sales is the right person or fire him or her.

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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. In revenue terms our first two years of sales were $2.1

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Lean vs. Mean – Small Business and Responsibility | crowdSPRING Blog – [link]. Hire slow, fire fast” is not only overused–it’s also complete b t.” Obama CTO Harper Reed on Keeping Sane in a High-Pressure Environment – [link]. Money on the Mind: Small Biz Financial Stories of the Week – [link].

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Social Media Small Business CTO Hire Design 105

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Zynga Leans On Some Workers to Surrender Pre-IPO Shares – [link]. Graphic Design Basics Part 2: Design Principles – [link]. Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template tco use today) – [link]. Pandora CTO Reveals Half of The U.S. Very shady, if true.

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Social Media Small Business Design CTO Hire 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners. “Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

Hire everyone you need as an employee. After being part of a team of five that co-founded a fairly successful company and still have the original team together after half a decade, here’s what I learned about having cofounders. Shoulder – not to cry on, but to lean on. You are the founder, the visionary, the uber-entrepreneur.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Kenya Dilution 143

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Austin Startup

AUGUST 11, 2017

First, put in the time Every important aspect of your business needs the appropriate amount of time and dedication. During that time, our company shifted product and focus from small/medium businesses to large enterprise ecommerce. Core values vs. culture code — what’s the difference? Never stop the hunt for product market fit.”

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CTO Hire Austin Cofounder eCommerce 48

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. In short, these are the top 10 remote team management lessons I have learned: Find a way to meet at the same time. Hire those you trust. Biggest future challenge: hiring. legal issues.

Management 152

Management SCRUM CTO Hire Distribution 152

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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. Situations where advisors can add huge value.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

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. What do you need to get started with predictive analytics?

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Analytics Algorithm Artificial Inteligence Campaign 131

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?

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Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Whilst the average tech entrepreneur may lack some of the more business relationship, networking, and sales/marketing skills – they still need to have an entrepreneurial mindset, understand financial models, market factors, and how the business ultimately makes money. If yes, hire a contract developer. Thoughts on.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

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. 9 – Do not cut your losses a la Pivot at the right time. 10 – A “User Un-Friendly” Product.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Are you landing a big sale? Those are some of the things that you want to make sure, and most importantly people think cash is king and you hear that all the time which is true, but really it’s assumptions are king. How much is going to sales? 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! 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.

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Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door.

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84