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. You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. Stuart Lander has joined Upfront Ventures to help us run operations.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. I see two common mistakes in companies (not just in startups, in fact).

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. 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. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte.

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Thursday, March 1, 2007 Entreprenuer Network Great post by Ben Kuo - The Importance of the “Network&# to Entrepreneurs - the informal connections between people in the technology industry here who have a vested interest in helping entrepreneurs take their companies to the next level.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. In the book they profile how VC worked in the early days (60s / 70s).

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Kevin Federline Search Engine Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. Disclosure: we helped build the system that is behind these.) He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO.

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Monday, March 12, 2007 MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point The NY Times did a piece today on MyShape, a start-up in Pasadena - Log in Your Measurements, and the Clothes May Fit. “They’re probably a little ahead of their time,&# she said.

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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. What I really liked in my conversations with The Hive is that they are willing to work with and fund ventures that would never get VC dollars.

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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. DatAllegro was one of the first companies in what is now the "big data" industry, and helped to pioneer the entire segment.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. And I certainly didn’t want him having to trapse up-and-down Sand Hill Road informing every VC of his next idea. And we wanted a head of global marketing.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

Our industry just took one big step towards legitimacy with the hiring of renowned media exec Ynon Kreiz to run Maker Studios. This followed an investment late last year by Time Warner in the company in a round totaling $36 million , led by Rachel Lam , head of their investment group. billion deal to Disney.

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SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. Too often, however, I have found CTO / Founders paired with business people who not only don't add value, but frequently detract from the value of the business.

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SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Content 175

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Thursday, March 22, 2007 Discussion Creation Among Bloggers - LinkedIn, Blogging and Discussion Groups Ive been participating in a Yahoo Group that are users of LinkedIn and who are Bloggers: [link] Its an interesting group of folks from diverse backgrounds. Maybe this meme will help.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

After my first Tweet with the Notorious mothafucka quote , I thought about my role as a VC and I Tweeted the following. I spent an hour on the phone working with Sam Rosen, the CEO of MakeSpace on a senior exec he is considering hiring. Having a peer group of people “like you” is incredibly helpful.

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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. We were looking to help deal with that issue, and also protect people from the bad unsubscribes.

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Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

“The reason I am doing this is because this is the way I can have the biggest impact on helping entrepreneurship become more successful.”. This offline event was successful in helping Kaviani find his own cofounder, Culin Tate, and a new venture. s first accelerator called The Fort and raised VC funding.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. 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. This was such a guy. he asked.

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socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

What that means, in more simple terms, is we''re able to help doctors with scheduling, medical billing, managing health records electronically, with a patient portal, and analytics--really a one stop shop for running their entire practice. I founded that with the former CTO of my first company, Kevin Smilak, who now works at Google.

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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 was learning Ruby on Rails just ahead of the students and wrote the tools to help them manage the servers in EC2.

Cloud Computing 188

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Now, despite bootstrapping, you actually have some connections to the venture capital world, don't you? Ramit Varma: I've been sort of in and out of the venture space since we started. My brother is actually at Anthem Ventures, working with Bill Woodward, and I was an intern there in business school.

Software Review 178

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socalTECH

MARCH 31, 2014

I was hired to head up strategy, marketing development, and product management. I helped to grow that to a major player in ecommerce and online advertising, which is used to find and buy chips use in your iPhone, in your computer, and everything else today. Yuri Pikover was the lead investor in that company, and become the CEO.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

Very, very few founders have an easy time despite what you read in the press. Knowing that now will help you greatly in your dark moments to know that you’re not the only one struggling. Also, make sure you know several partners at the VC firms who have invested in you because in tough times it helps to have very broad support.

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InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Leading advertising networks like Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network, ShareASale and many others license our platform to help their advertisers and publishers easily create, manage, track, and optimize call-based advertising campaigns.”. Our platform helps them do that. We met with a ton of VC’s and angels.

Marketing 209

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

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. Who’s going to help you with improving your marketing / positioning to become a clear platform category leader like Twilio? Him: “I know, I know.

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Frank Addante

MARCH 26, 2007

► August (3) Venture Capital - What's the rush? StrongMail Systems (Digital Messsaging Infrastructure Software) Status: VC-backed (Sequoia Capital, Globespan and Evercore) Lesson: Trust your gut. ► July (1) ► June (3) ► May (5) the Rubicon Project The Journey Startup 6.0: Zondigo, Inc.

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socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

I just went out to a VC conference out in New York, and what I'll say is -- it was just too damn easy. There were companies at the VC conference starving for money, but I think we could have raised $20M like nothing. It's a great time for that, because there's lots of talent out there.

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SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. thought it would be helpful to put some of my thoughts into a blog post and hopefully spur some conversation in the comments and over email.

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SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Chris Dixon , September 12, 2010 My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. I got rejected from every single one. Kanye West.

Startup 191

Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

But while Amazon blew away existing physical distribution channels to deliver products to you, we are blowing away existing physical infrastructure to help you store the things you want to keep – just not at your home. Sam moved back to NY and we announced our seed round of capital, which we led. I’m long NY.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

They often are very good at getting information out of people, helping create a framework for making decisions and pushing for support amongst the organization from those that back the decision and those that do not. I meet entrepreneurs all the time who tell me one of the following things: “I’ve had trouble raising money.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 16, 2016

The objective behind Nanit is to help parent “sleep more and monitor less.” By using computer vision Nanit is able to better help parents understand how well a child is sleeping and if they’re having difficulties what the causes may be (sound, ambient light, temperature or even, gasp, too much parental interference).

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