SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs? This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product. Founder : Ummm. what do you mean? Don't stress over format.

Develop 354

Develop Development Technical Review CTO Coach 354

SoCal Tech Calendar

JANUARY 11, 2012

But how do you ensure that your product or service is what the customer really wants, needs and will pay for? Panel includes: Dr. Tony Karrer CEO/CTO of TechEmpower; Lisa Ames Director of Marketing Programs for PivotLink ; Eileen Licitra Product Strategy Consultant with Concentric Focus. See [link] (more)

Product 100

Product Services TechEmpower Competition 100

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

Common revenue streams are consulting, training, support, customization, upgraded versions for corporate applications, etc. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?

Southern California 150

Southern California CTO Coach CTO Hire Social Media 150

SoCal CTO

MAY 15, 2009

Majid Abai, CEO of Pringo Majid Abai is the Chief Executive of Pringo, Inc. For the past 26 years, Majid has founded, led, turned-around and merged several companies in various industries, as well as providing consulting services to corporate executives in the areas of technology, governance, turn-around and strategy.

Social Network 150

Social Network Networking Yammer CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Have you tested the concept with customers using paper? Have you signed some test customers? Don't try to hunting programmers until you've pushed this as far as you can on paper and get early customers. Ask a few CTO type people. Or ask me Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions. Do you have wireframes?

Guide 349

Guide Startup Mobile Framework 349

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Logging/Auditing - do we need to log certain operations in order to help with customer support or for auditing?

Develop 396

Develop Development Startup SEO 396

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Logging/Auditing - do we need to log certain operations in order to help with customer support or for auditing?

Develop 384

Develop Development Startup SEO 384

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Have you tested the concept with customers using paper? Have you signed some test customers? Don't try to hunting programmers until you've pushed this as far as you can on paper and get early customers. Ask a few CTO type people. Or ask me Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions. Do you have wireframes?

Guide 296

Guide Startup Mobile Framework 296

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups and being a Startup CTO : Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March here are the top posts from May 2010. Putting customers first. Legendary customer support. You could just outspend. Innovative.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

doctors in small offices. We use a recurring revenue model, where a customer pays us a few hundred dollars on average. For a couple of years, I was the head of a boutique software consulting firm based in El Segundo. I founded that with the former CTO of my first company, Kevin Smilak, who now works at Google.

Startup 160

Startup El Segundo CTO Hire Outsource Development 160

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

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 person was educated at the best US schools and had worked for a top-tier strategy consulting firm – one of the big 3. Should she take a chance and potentially ruffle feathers?

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

socalTECH

MAY 28, 2013

The customer gets a great price, and the retailer gets both a new customer and a new sale. You can walk into any audio/video store, including Best Buy or Home Depot, and negotiate with the sales or customer service representative. I owned and ran my own search marketing company, and started and ran a digital consulting company.

Pricing 273

Pricing Product Help Sales 273

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Gregg was a graduate of Stanford and a Wharton MBA and had worked at the consulting firm BCG so I knew he was smart and capable. The rest of our team included the founding CTO of Maker Studios (Ryan Lissack) and the CEO of DataSift (Tim Barker) so we seemed to all be in good company of ex Salesforce execs looking to make a difference.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital CTO Coach Startup 150

socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

The old way was difficult, time consuming, and often expensive; referrals, calling up lawyers, going through initial consultations. They''re actually initial consultations, ranging from divorce to DUI. We''ve worked out he bugs, and since then have hired a full time CTO and others. But, how do you start?

Help 240

Help Startup CTO Hire Pricing 240

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 15, 2011

Tony is currently Founder/CEO for Eventify, an LA-based startup creating a venue marketplace, and Visible Factors, an SEO consulting company. He is currently also consulting as Social Producer at CBS News for their show What’s Trending. Founder’s Table, CEO, CTO, CIO, COO, and President, CallFire.

SEO 85

SEO CTO Coach Conference Social Media 85

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Beyond that, I want lots of conversations with experts, users, customers, VCs, partners, etc. Startups that come to me and ask me to sign an NDA in order to get Free Startup CTO Consulting really are missing it. You need all of these people to bake the cake. I may decide to hold back some detailed specifics around algorithms.

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

Beyond that, I want lots of conversations with experts, users, customers, VCs, partners, etc. Startups that come to me and ask me to sign an NDA in order to get Free Startup CTO Consulting really are missing it. You need all of these people to bake the cake. I may decide to hold back some detailed specifics around algorithms.

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

SoCal CTO

MARCH 18, 2010

Vince: I’m an author, speaker and management consultant with a special expertise in online media sales. Today I lead a small consultancy that helps advertising supported develop and scale the revenue producing sides of their businesses. Our current focus is Actors and Actresses and we are moving into other verticals.

Startup 225

Startup Los Angeles Social Network Twiistup 225

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. This is a novel user interaction that embeds casual entertainment directly into the operating system experience, based on some fairly interesting underlying technology. Tell Rod about the LA CTO Forum.

Product 150

Product Entrepreneur Social Media Google 150

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

Sergey Belyankin is our Chief Technology Officer. Sergey’s diverse experience as an entrepreneur, technology consultant and software executive qualifies him to lead amSTATZ’s technology development. We have 115 paying customers right now. How many users? What is your business model?

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 14, 2009

In 1986 I started an advertising and public relations firm to serve software and hardware companies, which became a marketing consulting business ( www.Allen.com ) when I moved to L.A. Along the way, I co-authored three books on one-to-one marketing ( [link] ) to help marketers learn how to built and nature relationships with their customers.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Networking Marketing Startup 150

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 22, 2014

HV: I would also add one more thing — we have consulted with neuroscience professionals here at USC, and they have informed the development of behavioral science models that we have built into our platform. So you write your hypothesis on what’s called a business canvas model and then you go talk to your potential customer.

USC 104

USC Southern California Activity Study 104

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. Even with these, you will have paper-tested your MVP, but the reality is that customers will not be able to assess the value to them until they actually use it. The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key Startup Metrics for the business.

Technical Review 338

Technical Review CTO Hire CTO Coach Software Review 338

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

In terms of the software, our student learning software, we're able to provide a very customized, personalized learning experience for students. It might not be problems in geometry, it might be because students can't add fractions in algebra. They can go online, and answer questions. This allows those teachers to identify skill gaps.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

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 was from South America but living in Switzerland and had launched a startup while holding down a day job at a consulting firm (McKinsey if memory serves). Great companies are comprised of great individual point people or functional leaders.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Kaiser joined forces with Bruce Schwartz (Founder and CTO) to write an entirely new code language they called Interactive Television Markup Language (ITVML). This new technology also gives the producers complete control over the experiences they are creating. Coincident.TV

Screening 109

Screening Content CTO Hire Platform 109

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Messenger : Rob Duva , Co-Founder, COO RingRevenue, prior Director of Customer Acquisition, CallWave. This is especially true for companies with expensive and complex products or services that are more consultative in nature, like insurance, financial services, home services, education and travel, etc. It won’t be easy.”.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

SoCal CTO

MARCH 4, 2010

I’ve worked with 30+ early-stage companies in all sorts of capacities (and spoken to many, many more), so I thought it might be worthwhile trying to classify the various ways that I’ve engaged in different technology roles in startups. Actually, David’s taking even broader roles than I generally do as he’s CEO for at least one startup.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Technical Advisors CTO Coach Startup 170

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

After the acquisition, MyMiniLife became the common technology platform at Zynga and powers 150M monthly users including games like Cityville, Farmville, and Frontierville. He is a founder of Strengths Doctors, a consulting firm which helps leaders design energizing work environments. Tyler Bleszinski – Founder of SB Nation.

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78

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. In two cases many of these were coming from customers using early releases.

Outsource Development 254

Outsource Development Software Development Develop Development 254

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

I find myself sending it to startup founders all the time – maybe just slightly less than Free Startup CTO Consulting. It’s also necessary to note that a poor mobile website experience can impact your customers’ perception of and loyalty to your brand. One notable gap in the 32 Questions post is Performance.

Startup 150

Startup SEO CTO Coach Web 150

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. can feel you now—corporate recruiters at career fairs, sending offer letters to work at banks and consulting firms. But I don’t think so.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Frank Addante

MAY 15, 2006

– Premium Online Advertising Company Age: 21 - 25 Time Period: 1997 - 2001 My Role: Chief Technology Officer, Technology Founder and Chairman, Advisory Board High Point: $500 million market cap; 3,000+ customers; 8 billion transactions per month; 65% Internet reach Warning, this will be a long posting.

Advertising 40

Advertising Startup Chief Technology Officer Technical Review 40

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 11, 2009

I'm married to Mike Freehling , M&A and financial management consultant. We came up with a positioning strategy that helps them sell value-added when recession-pinched customers are squeezing them for low rates. I speak Japanese, Portuguese, Hausa, French, some Spanish. Not one of these ways is low rates.

Marketing 150

Marketing Social Media Blogging Media 150

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. As CTO, it was my job to solve this problem.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40