Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. You hire great people. You course correct. You set direction. Engineering?

Entrepreneur 385

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Sales 385

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). and Microsoft had become.

CTO Hire 309

CTO Hire Organization Google Course 309

SoCal CTO

JUNE 26, 2012

I've done four Free CTO Consulting Sessions in the past month with startup founders who all had run into variations of the same problem. Investors and early customers were becoming worried about the ability of the founder to deliver. My belief is that you shouldn't sign that contract. They couldn't plan their business.

Outsource Development 254

Outsource Development Software Development Develop Development 254

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

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. Level of responsibility and time allocated. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.

Equity 99

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

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. Level of responsibility and time allocated. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.

Startup 174

Startup Equity Patents CTO Hire 174

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

The company--which is in the business of operating a content delivery network (CDN) to accelerate the delivery of web graphics, multimedia, applications, and more to end users-- recently disclosed it more than doubled its revenues in 2012, and has grown to over 230 employees--all due to a huge amount of demand for CDN services by its customers.

CTO Hire 248

CTO Hire Content Networking Web 248

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You hire people who look good on paper. So one of the surest signs you’ve hired a leader is the willingness of his or her former team to re-assemble. After 6 months – you know. You REALLY know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

” Of course I agree with this. So he would allocate say – 20% to sales, 15% to marketing, 20% to eng priorities, 10% to customer support, 10% to ops, 20% to ‘platinum customers’ and maybe 5% directly to me as the CEO. Of course we fancy ourselves as the best sales people in the company.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

socalTECH

MARCH 8, 2013

On the customer side, we have companies like Samsung, GE, Kaiser Permanente, Accenture. Let's say we saw an idea coming from a major partner, a customer like Samsung or someone like that. We have our own small seed fund, which we trigger to fund that company and hire a team, a CEO and a CTO. It's been great.

Incubator 208

Incubator Startup CTO Hire Ideas 208

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

So yes, I want to hire somebody with really high IQ and EQ but not somebody who is more knowledgeable at your specific skill set than you are. Nah, of course not. What results must you have in order to raise venture capital or garner good press coverage that helps drive customer acquisition (and also more funding!)? ON SUCCESS.

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? that talked about a recent NY Times article When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny. eHarmongy) as an acting CTO.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Because I am true to the hiring practices I preach, I wanted a strong exec who would “ punch above their weightclass ” by taking a job they hadn’t yet done but would hugely aspire to and thus work harder to out perform. I told him that this had been a big theme for me for some time. So there you have it.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

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. He and his partner told me about this new idea over the course of nearly a year. But remember what you learned in your MBA course – less downside / less upside … risk vs. reward. I finally called bullshit. It was May.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

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. Level of responsibility and time allocated. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.

Equity 95

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 95

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.

Startup 191

Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Build qualified advisory board.

Funding 112

Funding Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire 112

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. In my experience, the iceberg part of a code iceberg often involves handling of a lot edge cases. It may be that all the doomsayers are right.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. And of course on Twitter I’ve seen the Tweets, ReTweets and superlatives on what a great post it is. There are times where your solution should work but it just doesn’t. I built two companies.

Startup 390

Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Good entrepreneurs can admit when their course of action was wrong and learn from it. You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Messenger : Thorsten von Eicken , RightScale’s Co-Founder and CTO, Chief Architect at Citrix Online (formerly Expertcity) and Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University and UC Santa Barbara. I taught a somewhat crazy course about writing and deploying a scalable website in Ruby on Rails and deploying it in EC2.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

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. Level of responsibility and time allocated. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.

Equity 104

Equity Patents Startup CTO Hire 104

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Build qualified advisory board.

Startup 104

Startup CTO Hire Press Custom 104

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2012

If you are recognized as an expert in the business area of your startup, with a good reputation, and you know all the key vendors and customers, your value is huge. Sacrifice and time commitment. Who will be the CEO, CFO, and CTO? Domain expertise and connections. Building a product doesn’t get it distributed and sold.

Startup 101

Startup Entrepreneur Equity CTO Hire 101

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

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. Level of responsibility and time allocated. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.

Equity 62

Equity Startup Patents CTO Hire 62

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CFO) and a product lead (CTO). For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Build qualified advisory board.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Custom 101

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The company provides SAT, ACT, and other similar test preparation courses and related software. The reason we were able to offer our course at that price point, and why we have our scholarship policy, is because our internal systems allow us to run the business very efficiently, and consistently, with a minimum number of internal staff.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

If you are recognized as an expert in the business area of your startup, with a good reputation, and you know all the key vendors and customers, your value is huge. Sacrifice and time commitment. Who will be the CEO, CFO, and CTO? Domain expertise and connections. Building a product doesn’t get it distributed and sold.

Equity 91

Equity Startup CTO Hire CTO Coach 91

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CIO) and a product lead (CTO). For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Build qualified advisory board.

Tips 88

Tips Startup CTO Hire Press 88

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Of course I have. He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. Your highest priority right now is hiring the 1 or 2 people that are going to join your company and make a difference. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

We provide turnkey digital messaging appliances for enterprises, service providers and software developers to send marketing, e-commerce, CRM and customer service email. StrongMail’s software ensures reliable and timely delivery of their critical customer communications. We initially hired him as our in-house recruiter.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40