Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. My observation was that the CEO and VP of Engineering were confusing cause and effect.

Part-Time VPE 323

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 323

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference The Lean Startup Conference is next week--and now that we can step back and see all the speakers and mentors, we have to say: Wow. Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 28, 2014

Post by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts for The Lean Startup Conference At this year’s Lean Startup Conference , we seek to answer the difficult questions you face as an entrepreneur. We particularly like this post, Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good? ,

Part-Time VPE 160

Part-Time VPE Sales Lean Cofounder 160

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 9, 2013

I’ve written before about hiring for cultural fit, and about the importance of prioritizing cultural fit over competence when hiring at startups. I started thinking about it again when I saw this Dilbert comic , because it pokes fun at the culture of startups and their propensity only to hire people who fit into them.

Part-Time VPE 153

Part-Time VPE Hiring Engineer Portfolio 153

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 8, 2011

If you’re looking for a space, simply type in an address and find available spaces around it. Kowitt and Gupta then hired a full-time VP of Engineering, Nick Shiftan, who rebuilt the site from scratch. They later brought on Brendan Lowry as a community manager. Team First, Idea Later.

Part-Time VPE 223

Part-Time VPE Philadelphia Singapore Engineer 223

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. A CTO’s real value is in finding opportunities with asymmetric payoffs. They adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics. Autonomy to self-manage.

Fractional CTO 54

Fractional CTO CTO Hire CTO Technical Review 54

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

If you post up an ad to an online job board asking for someone to join your very high risk early stage startup company the odds of getting someone who decent are slim to none. The first part is the hardest part: hunting for a programmer. If they hire an accountant to help prepare and file their taxes that may cost around $500.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

And if you’re the founder of a successful startup and you’re not named Mark Zuckerberg, there’s the day when you’re replaced as CEO. So says David Feinleib , author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed. Often founders with a genius for product are not so good at managing people. There’s death. See The Silver Lining.

Part-Time VPE 133

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 133

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 9, 2010

This is Part 3 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.? Of hundreds of startup pitches at Capital Factory , almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, "If you build this product, I'll give you $X.". If you can't find ten people who say they'll buy it, your company is bullshit. Short-sighted, no?

Software Review 312

Software Review Part-Time VPE Houston Cofounder 312

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 14, 2013

Today's post is brought to you by my friend, Paul Blumenfeld , a recruiter who is one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to hiring processes. Many hiring managers write a job spec that is heavy on wishes and low on real needs. I see two reasons for this discrepancy: Static Specs. Short and Sweet.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Matching Hiring 54

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

Engineer 221

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 221

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

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. For lots of reasons that never worked out, but I liked him so much that the following year I tried to hire him as the VP of Engineering of Ardent. (He

Advisory Board 264

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 264

Austin Startup

AUGUST 19, 2018

If you are in the Austin startup community and have another panel to promote, please leave it in the comments below! You can still get on a panel by finding an existing panel that was submitted and adding yourself to it. It’s not too hard to find the panel organizer on social media and reach out to them. Don’t worry.

CTO Hire 48

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Fractional VPE Austin 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

And if you’re the founder of a successful startup and you’re not named Mark Zuckerberg, there’s the day when you’re replaced as CEO. So says David Feinleib , author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed. Often founders with a genius for product are not so good at managing people. There’s death. See The Silver Lining.

Part-Time VPE 70

Part-Time VPE Founder Silicon Valley Startup 70

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. I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs.

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Web Startup Lessons Advice from a CTO and Entrepreneur Home About Startup Advice: When to Use a Consulting CTO There are not many to be found. He or she might call himself a “consulting CTO,&# “freelance CTO,&# “on-demand CTO,&# “CTO on call,&# “CTO for hire,&# or just a “technology strategy advisor.&#

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Share this: chief technical officer chief technology officer cto interim cto job description start-up startup cto web cto Weve been swapping some thoughts with Daniel Kehoe , a consulting CTO acquaintance of ours from across the pond. Strategic Report to the CEO or board as an active part of the senior management team.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

devver.wordpress.com

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

The Devver Blog A Boulder startup improving the way developers work. Boulder CTO December Lunch with Tim Wolters with 5 comments The Boulder CTO Lunch meets once a month with a guest speaker and covers topics and questions that startup CTOs should find interesting. Becoming the CTO vs VP of engineering?

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Part-Time VPE Architecture Ruby 40

Altgate

OCTOBER 1, 2010

The idea behind the Scorecard is to provide a comprehensive benchmark for the management team of a particular company compared to it’s specific peer group. .&# The idea behind the Scorecard is to provide a comprehensive benchmark for the management team of a particular company compared to it’s specific peer group.

Part-Time VPE 39

Part-Time VPE Startup Salary Equity 39

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 21, 2013

The challenge for the other founder is that as a startup evolves from “the jungle” (super early stages, chaotic organization, prior to achieving product-market fit) to the “dirt road” (developing some organizational maturity and initial product market fit), senior functional executives often get hired from the outside to take over departments.

Cofounder 45

Cofounder Founder Part-Time VPE Portfolio 45

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

Though CTO as a traditional full-time position exists for decades, some companies do not feel they need a technology executive. CTO engagement mainly concerns startups and mature companies that have technologies at the core of their business. For instance, technology-centered startups are limited in their budget to afford a CTO.

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

It’s why I’m such a big proponent of Eric Reis’s Lean Startup movement and of virtually anything written by Steve Blank – the latest is The Startup Owner’s Manual written with Bob Dorf. If you’re not actively involved you’ll get both scope drift AND time drift. Set hard deadlines.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. A bonafide team is the assurance that the idea can be executed and that the business can scale when the time is right. Don’t make everyone a founder.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. Kaufer originally hired writers to product professional reviews and allowed user reviews on a whim. Really hard.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. Published on: July 13, 2011 Posted By Angie Tags: Elizabeth Knopf , Finding A Co-Founder , FounderDating , Sorced , Technical Co-Founder , Tips & Tricks. You might as well hire an outsourced team.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

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. But finding such people is more than a full time job. Indeed, I spend about half my time on it, while Lisa spends about all hers. But what they do is very, very rarely startups.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107