CTO Coach CTO Hire Organization Sales 
SoCal CTO
MARCH 2, 2015
As the organizer of the LA CTO Forum , I get lots of inquiries by job seekers and people looking for CTO / VP Engineering talent. I’ve written quite a bit about aspects of this topic, especially from the perspective of startup founders looking for talent – you can find these in: Startup CTO.
Both Sides of the Table
JULY 1, 2010
We all like to think of startups as “non hierarchic&# organizations and to some extent that should be true. I never built a Google-sized business but I did build an organization from scratch that grew to 120 employees in 5 countries before we sold it. An obvious example would be in sales.
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Both Sides of the Table
FEBRUARY 16, 2015
In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. 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. I did this.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. 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. Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. Making Things Happen.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 13, 2015
We just recently brought in a CFO, a CTO, and also brought our technology team in house, so we are positioned to move our product forward, and grow and hire sales people in all of these different cities. One of them is serving as an advisor, and the other will be joining our board.
socalTECH
FEBRUARY 17, 2017
I had a sales force when I was at SkyPipeline, selling telecom, networking, and broadband wireless products. We hired the ex-CTO of Sears, and other senior executives out of Disney in software. We went from $9M in sales to $624M in sales in eighteen months, and sold out at 19x EBITDA.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 27, 2013
He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens.
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