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Announcing a Deal I’ve Wanted to Talk About for a Year

Both Sides of the Table

I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan. Ethan recruited a great team of people to help build this proposition including Lisa Robinson running marketing and Rahul Thathoo as CTO who have been working tirelessly for the past year. The company was called Red Beacon.

CTO Coach 359
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Attorney and Startup Business Advisor – Aaron Shechet

SoCal CTO

We are not “finders” and usually serve the role of advisor and attorney. Sometimes we draft business plans and coach the entrepreneurs on their pitch, and sometimes we even help develop a business model. It provides a more active opportunity for people to get to know each other, and in more detail.

Startup 150
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People Management: Startup Teams Should Dip but not Skip

Both Sides of the Table

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. But I knew that to be a good decision maker I needed first hand knowledge rather than just a summary from my CTO. But as a CEO you can’t rely solely on this information.

Startup 308
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Be Careful About Being a Meddling Startup CEO

Both Sides of the Table

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. The way we dealt with this issue is that we took each senior exec in the company (including the CFO and the CTO) and assigned them to important accounts. ” Of course I agree with this.

Startup 150
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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

Both Sides of the Table

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. Should she take a chance and potentially ruffle feathers?

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8 Tips To Get the Most Out of Your Investors and Board

Both Sides of the Table

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts. Rob is driven to learn.

Tips 365
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Technology Roles in Startups

SoCal CTO

Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment. I am looking for one or two startups that I can work with on their road to success as a virtual C-level officer, board member, advisor or other relationship.