TechCrunch LA

APRIL 24, 2020

The company, which employed about 160 people, laid off 57 workers, according to documents filed with the California Employment Development Department. However, he did confirm to TechCrunch that he had to reduce staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was enough to get the attention of investors and at least two global OEMs as customers.

Startup 251

Startup Technical Review Outsource Development Platform 251

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2011

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Outsource your technical requirements.

Technical Review 94

Technical Review Entrepreneur Outsource Development Outsource 94

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. It depends on the business, people, technologies, etc.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Technical Advisors CTO Coach Startup 170

Inverted Software

JUNE 15, 2018

At Inverted Software we often help our clients manage offshore and onshore development teams. Our proprietary processes and unique experience helps us evaluate and correct software development practices that have proven inefficient and instill practices that insure productivity and success. Developers love to experiment.

Software Review 51

Software Review Software Development Outsource Development Development Team Review 51

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2012

I often hear the qualms of business-smart but non-technical entrepreneurs, wondering if they really have a chance in this high-technology marketplace. I tell them that if their idea or solution is technology intensive, they clearly need technology strength on the team. Outsource your technical requirements.

Technical Review 92

Technical Review Technology Startup Outsource Development 92

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.

Organization 280

Organization Custom Customer Tips 280

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2019

It’s always tempting to think that more product variations will satisfy more customers and lead to new sales. Unit costs are important, but don’t forget about the cash flow hit, extra storage costs, and the probability of obsolete inventory due to necessary updates or pivots. Outsourcing services that could be done in-house.

Outsource Development 122

Outsource Development Outsource Metrics Technical Review 122

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 11, 2023

For example, the development of reusable rocket technology by SpaceX and Amazon, who could not match NASA supplier budgets, has opened huge new opportunities in space travel and exploration. I’m often asked for the secret to this attribute in developing a team culture. Outsourcing of manufacturing is another option.

Resource 111

Resource Competition Outsource Development Startup 111

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

Because of the rapid pace with which Venture Capitalists review investment opportunities, they must employ pattern matching techniques which include identifying common fundraising deal breakers. Solution – Identify the competencies that are critical to your startup's success and develop them internally.

Technical Review 264

Technical Review Entrepreneur IP RSS 264

socalTECH

AUGUST 5, 2015

Santa Barbara-based energy storage technology developer Ice Energy announced today that it is opening up a new, research and development center in Riverside, with plans to immediately hire 12 at the location. megawatt deployment the company has contracted with Southern California Edison (SCE). READ MORE>>.

Riverside 100

Riverside Santa Barbara Southern California Outsource Development 100

InfoChachkie

MAY 9, 2011

In many cases, agreements crafted by BDC lawyers resemble ConTraps rather than mutually beneficial contracts. This series describes how entrepreneurs can craft company-changing agreements with BDCs, while avoiding Kiss of Death contract provisions. BDCs often ask to “private label” or “white label” a smaller company’s technology.

Outsource Development 170

Outsource Development Entrepreneur Press Technical Review 170

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 22, 2014

You will need this granularity not only for successfully managing your business, but also when preparing for funding pitches and during investor due diligence. Outsourcing can be an extremely cost-effective solution here. At a minimum, you should engage a lawyer to draft and/or review every contract you enter into.

Startup 97

Startup Outsource Development Software Review Sales 97

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

In the Ad Tech world PS revenue often means providing “media services” as a value-add to using your product. This might mean helping customers buy traffic, arb’ing deals, helping with RTB pricing or trading, etc. Minimize Any Custom Work That Will Not Feed Back Into Your R&D. rollout support. configuration.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software Services Company 321

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

And of course the most successful technology companies: Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com [duh], Oracle, Microsoft all have loads of sales people. The most important way to sell a product for an early-stage business (or frankly any stage) is to have strong referenceable customers. How do you get referenceable customers?

Startup 403

Startup Sales Software Review Technical Review 403

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

At Silicon Beach Fest Hollywood 2012 Kevin Winston organized a panel called “How to Find and Hire a Developer”. Always have a developer do a test project before hiring them to make sure they deliver quality work. This means selling at least 5-10 customers in advance, before it is even built. Ask for is code samples.

CTO Hire 81

CTO Hire Outsource Development Develop Development 81

InfoChachkie

MAY 9, 2011

In many cases, agreements crafted by BDC lawyers resemble ConTraps rather than mutually beneficial contracts. This series describes how entrepreneurs can craft company-changing agreements with BDCs, while avoiding Kiss of Death contract provisions. BDCs often ask to “private label” or “white label” a smaller company’s technology.

Outsource Development 124

Outsource Development Entrepreneur Press Technical Review 124

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. The United States is now a debtor nation to China and that the bill is about to come due. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? These are probably the two sites where I've posted the most reviews.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

InfoChachkie

MAY 5, 2011

If you allow your prospective partner or customer to milk the cow for free , they will resist paying for it. If you enter into a development or trial partnership for free, you are allowing the BDC to forestall its ultimate determination of the value of the partnership. Do Not Deploy a Free Pilot. Oh, but you scoff. Oh, but you scoff.

Outsource Development 244

Outsource Development Entrepreneur Resource Press 244

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

In the initial phases of any new market you’re developing a product (hopefully with a minimal set of features), getting feedback from customers, refining your product based on user feedback and then re-launching your product. Markets develop for a complex set of factors that are often beyond all of our control.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

socalTECH

MARCH 19, 2019

We started focusing on that, and at the time we were doing only phone verification, but then we started adding in data analytics because of customer demand, we added in some other things like straight messaging rather than pin codes. What enabled you to get that first customer on board? We were really focused on customer acquisition.

Marina Del Rey 113

Marina Del Rey Software Review Startup Incubator 113

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 2, 2009

As noted in Pour and Stir Part I , the key to the successful execution of this strategy is managing the following equation: The cost to acquire a customer < lifetime value of a customer. Decreasing Your Customer Acquisition Costs. This is equivalent to being handed a free customer for every ten customers you acquire.

Custom 164

Custom Customer Advertising SEM 164

socalTECH

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Currently, we have over a thousand customers, with customers ranging from anywhere from 100 employees to clients with more than a 100,000. Most of the top 100 cities and counties in the country are our customers, and twenty out of fifty states run all their recruiting and HR through our system.

Software Review 243

Software Review SaaS Startup Technical Review 243

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers.

Sales 382

Sales Help Startup Pricing 382

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 13, 2013

App developers are coming up with new ideas daily to make our lives easier. Your chores can be outsourced through Porter. The nuts and bolts of our tech company is that CMS in the middle, the connection engine. What we are spending money and time on is onboarding customers on one end and on the other end onboarding providers.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review Mobile Startup Los Angeles 87

socalTECH

JULY 22, 2016

For our interview today, we have an interview with Gabe Grifoni , CEO and founder of Rufus Labs (www.getrufus.com), which has has developed an Android-based, wearable device which is aimed at use in the enterprise, warehouses, and factories. When we talk to customers, we hear about these pain points.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Startup Software Review CTO Hire 100

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 9, 2014

Traditionally, these between a rock and hard place problems have been solved with a limited pool of expensive options – usually associated with long contracts and high billables for “MBA quality” work. What if you could combine the flexibility of outsourcing with the quality level of highly skilled strategists?

Outsource Development 105

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review Outsource 105

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

Thus, you must first create the playbook by which an independent sales rep can readily sell your product, including: identifying objections and developing strategies to overcome them, creating reference accounts and establishing meaningful customer adoption. Value is created through diligent hard work. 8 ) Grant Exclusivity.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Way back in the early eighties, I was privileged to be part of the original IBM PC development team, led by Don Estridge. For IBM, the Personal Computer was a paradigm shift from their big business legacy, built with new technologies for totally new markets, and battleships turn very slowly.

IBM 85

IBM IBM Entrepreneur Technical Review 85

socalTECH

AUGUST 4, 2015

Santa Barbara-based Ice Energy (www.ice-energy.com) has quietly been working away at developing energy storage systems to help smooth out the demand for energy on the nation's power grid. Can you talk about your technology? Our customer is not the building owner or tenant, it's the utility. megawatts of energy.

Southern California 100

Southern California Technical Review Demand Outsource Development 100

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2019

We slowly realized that Microsoft’s value went far beyond his technical contributions, due to his connections with key software developers and relationships with hardware manufacturers who could make the PC revolution universal. Build connections with key customers and competitors.

IBM 87

IBM IBM Ideas Technical Review 87

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 13, 2009

For children with a proclivity toward business, a newspaper route provided an invaluable opportunity to develop the following entrepreneurial skills: Punctuality – Newspapers had to be delivered on time, irrespective of the weather, the fact that Sunday papers can weigh several pounds each or the requirement to wake up at the crack of dawn.

Web 2.0 222

Web 2.0 Web Sales Outsource Development 222

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2018

It’s like the entire industry wants to outsource its brain to the smartest person they know and then follow that person. Founders read the tech press every day filled with stories about these $20 million fund-raisings by this firm and that firm and it sounds like everybody else is doing it except for you. Wait, make that $1 million.

Press 232

Press Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 232

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

China is indelibly an important part of the future of the global technology system. Ask your customer why you lost. I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects.

Outsource Development 333

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

China is indelibly an important part of the future of the global technology system. Ask your customer why you lost. I had been competing to win a contract at Thames Water, the largest water company in the UK. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects.

Outsource Development 328

Outsource Development Software Review Technical Review News 328

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

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. They’re in beta).

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Custom 316

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

During the down market they were able to double down on recruiting, sales, outsourcing, new market entries and marketing (yes, with Tiger ads ). Investment in training, adherence to process, global knowledge sharing systems, quality control / partner reviews and campus recruitment programs that attracted the right talent.

Technical Review 302

Technical Review Marketing IP Outsource Development 302