SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. So, I wanted to use this post to make it official - we are offering free startup CTO consulting sessions.

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CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 264

SoCal CTO

MARCH 3, 2011

I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. So, I wanted to use this post to make it official - we are offering free startup CTO consulting sessions.

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CTO Hire Startup Technical Review Development Team Review 259

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2007

I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. I also found this interesting graphic of the changing needs around the CTO role in different size/type companies that somewhat echoes my experience. So, what is my role as an acting CTO? Great question.

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Startup CTO Hire Technical Advisors Technical Review 231

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

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CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 167

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

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CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

Todd Gitlin of Safire Partners was nice enough to compile some data on CTO Equity and Compensation at Venture Backed Companies for the LA CTO Forum and present last year. Todd is a go to resource for people looking for talent in startups. It is interesting to see the salaries of CTOs of pre-Revenue even pre-Launch companies.

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CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Company 273

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Did they really need a Startup CTO or Developer or both? And do I fit as a Part-Time CTO , Technology Advisor , CTO Founder , Acting CTO ?

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CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

I've recently received several emails from people looking for a technical cofounder for their startup. Make sure you go through the 32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder. You should definitely hit up the Startup Weekend events as well. Here's an example of that kind of email.

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CTO Hire CTO Coach Startup Equity 211

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

This is not only sad but incredibly frustrating, because it is so easy to see how a great technology can be developed and commercialized if only - if only the CTO hadn't been impulsive and insecure and brought on a business partner too early in the game. … And it’s not just inexperienced CTOs. I wonder if this is a shift?

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CTO Hire Startup Equity Sales 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

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Startup Equity Patents CTO Hire 174

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2022

The cuts, which amount to around one-third of Glossier’s corporate workforce, will primarily impact the company’s technology team. “[W]e W]e are shifting our technology strategy to leverage external partners for parts of our platform that we’re currently maintaining internally,” Weiss wrote in the email announcing the layoffs to staff.

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CTO Hire Layoffs Commerce Email 197

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a cofounder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

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Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

socalTECH

OCTOBER 10, 2013

In what is a fairly unusual move, last week, Tradesparq (www.tradesparq.com), a Chinese startup in the area of B2B trade information, said it was planning on setting up its operations here in Southern California, as part of an expansion and scaling of the company. Michael Kleist: We started in 2010. What is Tradesparq?

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Southern California Startup SoCal CTO Hire 170

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. “The growth of a successful startup usually has three phases: There’s an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out what it’s doing. So I like that bit, too.

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Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

It''s never a great time: you figure out you have a legal problem, and need to find a lawyer. But, how do you start? The old way was difficult, time consuming, and often expensive; referrals, calling up lawyers, going through initial consultations. What''s LawKick about? That happens in just a five minute process.

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Help Startup CTO Hire Pricing 240

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

I recently wrote a post about why I didn’t think early-stage startups should have COOs. In bringing up the issue I wasn’t “hating on COOs&# – I’m just challenging you to think about whether your CEO + COO structure really provides the right amount of clarity in your organization. I find them strange.

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Startup CTO Hire Sales Email 292

socalTECH

MARCH 8, 2013

Stuart Frost is head of Frost Venture Partners (www.frostvp.com), and the founder of DatAllegro, which he started in Orange County and eventually sold to Microsoft for $275M in 2008. I decided to become a parallel entrepreneur, and started a whole series of companies in big data. Second, we only incubate companies we ourselves start.

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Incubator Startup CTO Hire Ideas 208

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. Even bigger is the desire to stick one’s middle finger up at all of the people who doubted you all along. Now they are partners.

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Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets.

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Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. I was recently on TWiST with Jason Calacanis.

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Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

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 ).

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CTO Hire Organization Google Course 309

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2018

We spoke with Dave Fink , CEO and co-founder of Posite, and Jonathan Neddenriep , co-founder and CTO of the company, to learn more. Dave Fink: Postie is a building a technology platform with a mission of making direct mail marketing behave as easily and dynamically as your favorite, programmatic channels. What is Postie?

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CTO Hire Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Marketing 100

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). Tell us a bit of the story on how you started HashtagOne? What's the theme of your investments?

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

socalTECH

JANUARY 3, 2011

To start off the year, we are publishing our first interview for the season with Jamie Siminoff , the CEO of Los Angeles-based Unsubscribe.com , an online service which helps you unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and email lists. in funding from Charles River Ventures, First Round Capital, DFJ Frontier, and angel investors.

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Newsletter Startup CTO Hire Blogging 216

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 A Different Kind of Incubator - The Hive I recently met with The Hive a new incubator in Orange County. This company was started by Victoria Duff (who many of us know from back in the late 90s), Phillis Lane (who I have known for quite a few years) and Jon Bukosky.

Incubator 150

Incubator CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

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Equity Startup Patents CTO Hire 62

socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

We caught up CEO and founder Dan Rodrigues to learn more. Dan Rodrigues: The genesis for the idea actually started in my last business, between the first company I started--which was an Internet startup--and Kareo. I founded that with the former CTO of my first company, Kevin Smilak, who now works at Google.

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Startup El Segundo CTO Hire Outsource Development 160

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. in Computer Science.

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CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology, or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone.

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Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 95

socalTECH

JULY 22, 2016

Rufus Labs is one of a number of hardware startups which have started to proliferate in the community, due to low cost hardware, 3D printing, and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Gabe Grifoni: At Rufus Labs, we are focused heavily on building wearables and technology in a wearable platform for the enterprise.

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Technical Review Startup Software Review CTO Hire 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

Two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. You need to find the skills or experience you don’t have in business, technology or money. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so there is no equity value in the idea alone. Amount of venture funding provided.

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Equity Patents Startup CTO Hire 104

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

This is part of my Startup Advice series. So I was surprised at the sheer volumes of decisions that had to be made when I became a startup CEO. The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Somebody asks whether you plan to set up 401k’s and do contribution matching.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

I spent an hour on the phone working with Sam Rosen, the CEO of MakeSpace on a senior exec he is considering hiring. I will soon announce a few fundings (not yet closed, sorry) and I’m beginning to help them think about how to ramp up their engineering teams. But they must all start somewhere. Whom to Meet? .”

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Networking Startup CTO Coach Email 366

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 16, 2014

We recently sat down with Luc Berlin, co-founder of Miigle, a SoCal startup that has an aggressive global mission to bring entrepreneurs together from around the world. We followed up with Luc to see just how he’s been managing the entrepreneurial waters. The quintessential problem that every startup has is one of visibility.

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SoCal Southern California Startup Platform 104

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 31, 2011

Coming hot off the coat tail of earlier this year’s Startup Weekend LA where Zaarly launched, this LASW was nothing less than amazing and as someone put, one of the best tech events in LA they had ever been to. With the pitching energy escalating in the room, regular pitches began short after.

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Los Angeles Startup Angel Tech Coast Angels 73

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

The biggest culprit to a startup failure is a dysfunctional founding team. based startup CoFoundersLab has addressed this issue by taking the guesswork out of matchmaking by introducing scientific methods, deep research and algorithms that have proven to lead to successful matches. I wanted to give back to my community in the D.C.

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Entrepreneur Santa Monica Startup CTO Hire 87

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. How did Revolution Prep start? We started in 2000. It was us, funding ourselves from credit cards, literally, to a company that is now on par with Kaplan and Princeton Review.

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Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178