Business Plan Blog

AUGUST 20, 2013

In order to be a successful tech startup, the team must consist of a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) level member to help with the technology plan. This is generally achieved in one of the following ways: CTO Level Co-Founder (Equity). CTO Level Board Member or dedicated Adviser (Free or Equity). CTO Employee (Salary).

CTO Hire 55

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Architecture Cofounder 55

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Value factors include your related product breadth and depth, relationships with thought leaders, key vendors, and large potential customers. Building the product may be the easy part of your startup challenge.

Equity 238

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 238

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

A week or so ago, we launched the Key Hire Wire at First Round. Because people live, shop, and buy in real time, Monetate products enable e-commerce web sites to market in real time. You will initially spend majority of time personally working with individual accounts and coaching sales team.

Part-Time VPE 92

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Engineer Sales 92

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Value factors include your related product breadth and depth, relationships with thought leaders, key vendors and large potential customers. Building the product may be the easy part of your startup challenge.

Cofounder 261

Cofounder Stock Founder Technical Cofounder 261

Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 3, 2008

My goal is to climb the ranks and increase my salary." I get many emails in the spirit of this one and thought it was about time I wrote a proper post about it. I am getting to how you can increase your salary part. It is quite likely that you'll sit in the IT (CTO / CIO) function. Please stick with me.

Technical Review 115

Technical Review Analytics Salary Fractional CTO 115

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. And we’re lucky because they deliver many of the great products, services and content that we consume in our lives every day. It’s lost salary for a period of time. What about VC’s and Risk? It was May.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

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. It’s worth spending time on recruiting. And you need to do it sooner rather than later. Don’t be fooled by titles.

Technical Review 159

Technical Review CTO Hire Software Review Startup 159

www.huffingtonpost.com

MAY 10, 2011

We sell the winning designs to customers in the form of personalized wedding invitations, Christmas cards , and other stationery and photo card products. Ive occasionally worked with executive recruiters, for example in hiring a CTO for my first company, Eve.com. This time, I decided to handle the process myself.

CTO 43

CTO CTO Hire PHP Cofounder 43

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Value factors include your related product breadth and depth, relationships with thought leaders, key vendors, and large potential customers. Building the product may be the easy part of your startup challenge.

Equity 120

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 120

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

There are those amongst us the are willing to abandon the comforts of a job with a salary and perhaps the prestige of being able to tell family members, loved ones and friends that “I work for Google, Goldman Sachs, Apple, FedEx, Verizon or Coca Cola” and instead put out selves out there to potentially look stupid one day.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? With mobile development agencies and product incubators on the rise and more corporate “labs” spinning out each day, there’s no shortage of talent to help you build the next great Web or mobile app. Still, a product is nothing without scalability.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

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

DECEMBER 14, 2009

you can get to know Mark a bit more in my post Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller ). First, early in the post, Mark mentions: The idea behind the meetup is to connect technology startups with prospective hires who may be interested to work for “alternative compensation”–e.g., reduced salary, partial equity, good experience, etc.

Software Developers 150

Software Developers Software Development Software Developer 150

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. So the VP Product gets an equity grant of ((87.5k/25mm) 

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64

SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

they need a developer more than they need a CTO. As a founder, you do need to be telling the developers what the business and product goals are. I just had a fellow CTO ask me about a particular technical design problem and several directions they could go and ask for my thoughts on the tradeoffs for those different choices.

Technical Cofounder 280

Technical Cofounder Developer Fractional CTO CTO Hire 280

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. The response from across the country?

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

They can easily get great benefits and a six figure salary. What is the product? I am a “business person” – I’ve been in the Internet space since 1998 when I co-founded GoTo.com/Overture, and I have deep product and marketing expertise and a track record of building successful consumer companies and brands.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Twenty-five years ago, to go public you had to sell stuff – not just acquire users or have freemium products. People had to actually pay you for your product. This required a repeatable and scalable sales process, which required a professional sales staff and a product stable enough that customers wouldn’t return it.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

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

konamoxt.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

January 21, 2009 Why Your Startup Can’t Afford To NOT Hire a CTO As I mentioned in my last post, one of the many things I do as an entrepreneur is to advise other start up companies. One of the common requests I get as an adviser is the help interview and vet potential CTO candidates. So what are you to do? This is critical!

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire CTO Hiring Engineer 40

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. Every time a startup raises capital, all common shareholders are diluted. In cases where a startup is sold within a few years time, there is often acceleration agreements for unvested shares. That is your opportunity cost.

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

Some investors are team focused, others market focused, others seems to look for product / market fit. Only then can I even care about product, market or their nebulous “fit.&#. It’s my belief that through exceptional leadership you attract great teams that do more than the sum of the parts. Is it book smarts?

Leadership 363

Leadership CTO Hire Technical Review Cofounder 363

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

Hire everyone you need as an employee. After launching our Windows online backup service five years ago, our CTO pitched that we should focus on launching our Mac version next. At that time, Mac computers made up a mere 6 percent of the market and I argued we needed to focus on other areas. One” – You have to have a cofounder.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Kenya Dilution 143

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

David Crow writes in his article “ Founders versus Early Employees “, “Remember the goal is to incent early employees to have an emotional ownership of the product and company they are building. I was originally hired as a contractor, developing a SaaS app from scratch, including DB design and coding. The employee buys a.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

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. 19 – Not working on it full time. Often times, many of them may be really good. Startups are hard.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

www.quora.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Early employees are paid a salary from day 1, don't have to have the reputation/connections to raise money, take on much less risk, and often have much more information about the company (team so far, financials, product traction/progress) when they decide to join than the founders do when they found the company. This answer.

Equity 40

Equity Employee Founder Cofounder 40

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door.

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.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

Derek Sivers about me blog books email list contact How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen 2010-06-19 Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Say, “We are hiring a developer to create only the beginning of an application. Hire one from each.

CTO Hire 84

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

SXSW Panel: The Intersection of Co-Working and Wellness barbary (@barbary) | Twitter Jennifer Aldoretta Director of Operations Threatcare Jennifer is the Director of Operations for Threatcare, where she has led the development of radical diversity and inclusion initiatives, including Threatcare’s open salary policy. As the third U.S.

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48