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 ? Was it a case of needing Homework?

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. If you like the quick summary notes, please check out Adam’s blog on tech, entrepreneurship & VC as a thank you.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. 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? You likely are writing your first one of these. Go find a new technical resource. Founder : Umm.

Develop 354

Develop Development Technical Review CTO Coach 354

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. I filled up with 20 people pretty quickly and realized this schedule was masochistic.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. would you want to give up the right to invest in subsequent rounds? Do investors always take up their prorata rights in later rounds? ” Some do, some don’t.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Start-up Lessons.&#. Recently I wrote a blog post about how I hated losing, but I embrace it. My starting line with every entrepreneur is that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned from F’ing it up on my first business.

Startup 247

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Writing 247

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 23, 2010

I was an early user of Quora and like all new technologies they take a bit of playing with them for a while, discussing them with others and reflecting on them to let them sink in. Take AVC.com, the blog by Fred Wilson. It was this sort of techie / geeky looking UI implementation of questions that anybody could ask about startups.

Blogging 301

Blogging SEO Startup Writing 301

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. See Five Things Meme as an example.

Blogging 150

Blogging CTO Coach CTO Hire Southern California 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. Brad on blogging. How did you start blogging? “My In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. was starting. Is that when it became big?

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Then fans would be tasked with writing their own stories, submitting them to the Realms of Ruin universe by minting them as NFTs on the Solana blockchain. If the authors are inviting fans to write fan fiction about a universe they created, who owns the derivative works? The project ultimately imploded due to a combination of factors.

Writing 196

Writing Outsource Development Technical Review Examples 196

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

.” I have been weighing in slowly on the topic over the past few weeks on Twitter but have avoided writing a blog post about it until now. I started from a position of wanting a “real identity” because to me I want to know whom I’m dealing with. Contrast that with HackerNews. Cars are dehumanizing.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. If I check Twitter it’s usually because I’m waiting for a meeting to start and I never write posts during the day. They could start to form an opinion. I enjoy that. Are these signal or noise?

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

InfoChachkie

APRIL 25, 2011

If you are a leader at a startup and you are reading a business book, you are not closing customers, raising capital, improving your product, or spending time with your loved ones. The short version of my review is: “Enchanting? It has also influenced my thoughts, as evidenced by the six infoChachkie blog entries which reference Art.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Blogging Class Entrepreneur 279

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

It’s the first EIR that we’ve had in the years that I’ve been with the firm and I hope will be the start of our investment in this program. I became aware of Sam several years ago as I started noticing his name repeated in the comments section of my blog. Sam later decided he wanted to do a startup.

Startup 372

Startup Course Ideas Invest 372

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post. I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# Then I spent many years as a startup CEO. That’s true. Here’s why: 1.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

When the masses start all running one way without questioning “why?&# – and when it defies any logic I can figure out in my head – I call bullshit. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. “ Question Authority.&#.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

SoCal CTO

MARCH 18, 2010

I started out as screenwriter, went into local television, ran ad sales in the west for AOL and joined Facebook in the companies very early days. With that as a start it rarely feels burdensome. What keeps you up at night? What are some of the top things you've published online, e.g., blog posts? What’s the short version?

Startup 225

Startup Los Angeles Twiistup Social Network 225

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

At the highest level we’re looking for somebody really intelligent, digitally native, financially numerate and interested in startups. If this isn’t you, we’d probably still have a look if you did something truly exception – probably at startup or tech firm. Plus, show my you can write!

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders. Boards are not appointed to be founder-friendly lapdogs for the 1–3 founders who start companies and usually own the largest equity positions in the company.

Startup 217

Startup Technical Review Equity Report 217

Tech.Co

MAY 26, 2020

Jeff Bezos didn't get to be the world's richest man by writing a lot of checks, and one recent way to keep Amazon's profits healthy has been to cut its affiliate commissions scheme. A host of bloggers and publishers are seeing their revenues massively dented, from tiny BBQ grill review sites to the hugest media organizations around.

Technical Review 129

Technical Review Buzzfeed News Networking 129

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

If you’re a technology startup you need to excel at product, of course. The starting point of product IS marketing, which is what a lot of young entrepreneurs that never studied business don’t realize. The start of marketing is figuring out a market need and a way to solve that need better than anybody else.

Marketing 379

Marketing Startup SEM SEO 379

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2010

I’ve talked about how Twitter is a new form of RSS (curated RSS), it’s a a new form of IM / SMS , it’s a place where business is conducted and it’s a place where advertising will drive leads due to the link sharing nature of Twitter. He had followed me on Twitter and sent me a nice message about my blog.

Social Network 347

Social Network Networking Blogging RSS 347

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

Unfortunately my wife reads my blog and she’d log in and add comments to dispel this rumor (she keeps me honest. When added to my volume of Facebook messages, LinkedIn requests, blog comments and Tweets my head is definitely below water. I scan it for the most important messages to be sure nothing urgent has popped up.

Product 280

Product Startup Email Technical Review 280

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). I eventually stumbled on to the best source of high-quality deal flow imaginable – blogging. I think my mentality to banker pitches was best summed up in this article about Y Combinator in which Paul Graham apparently made the following quotes.

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. So why I am writing it then? So I feel the need to speak up.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 28, 2012

The first-ever Silicon Beach Fest attracted more than 2,000 attendees from LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, New York, Toronto, and London to celebrate LA startups and entertainment with panels, parties, pitch fests, hackathon, and beach games: volleyball, basketball and surfing lessons in Santa Monica and Venice on June 21-23, 2012.

Hollywood 67

Hollywood Technical Review Startup Rustic Canyon 67

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). I eventually stumbled on to the best source of high-quality deal flow imaginable – blogging. start-ups are overvalued. And they have access to some of the most talented technology entrepreneurs so this is a worthy goal for them.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

If you’re not familiar with the term it’s basically trying to help all of us who are deluged with technology to find ways to cope with the masses of information without having it ruin our lives. Let me start by saying I’m a huge business book cynic. You’re on the DS (deferred startup) plan.

Startup 295

Startup Email Technical Review Course 295

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 20, 2013

In the past, if your startup had a website presence, the company was credible by definition. Yet most startups I know experience the same shock of disappointment when they first open up their website to offer their “million dollar idea” product, and nobody comes. Set up an award, and show winners. People buy from people.

Search Engine Optimization 105

Search Engine Optimization Startup Advertising SEO 105

socalTECH

OCTOBER 31, 2011

One of Urbandig's co-founders, Mike Macadaan -- the former VP of User Experience at MySpace, and creator of the technology conference Twiistup--sat down to talk to us about the company. There are lots of knowledgeable people that we find to write these guides--people who grew up there, and who are experts in the area.

Guide 203

Guide Software Review Twiistup Technical Review 203

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We also discussed how to deal with pricing in angel rounds and a strategy I advocated in my “social proof&# blog post , which is to price your initial angel round really low and get in the best possible angels as a way to get momentum in the company. There’s some stuff here that I even prefer not to put into writing.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Capital Startup Pricing 282

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 11, 2011

I recommend you first review Dharmesh’s article and then listen to Naval’s thoughts. Value Prop Twitter Style : AngelList is the productization of raising startup funding. 6) Naval, why does the startup world need AngelList and Venture Hacks? . “As We are productizing the raising of capital for startups. ”.

Startup 273

Startup Software Review Summary Technical Review 273

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I recently read a book I’d highly recommend to every reader of this blog called “ Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive &# by Robert B. Before booking a hotel I always check out Trip Advisor and read reviews. If you haven’t read it you should definitely buy it – other people just like you did.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Good idea & plan: You must start with a good idea and a PowerPoint deck (my outline is here , scroll down mid way). And a great product starts with the founder. Their name alone is enough to get meetings set up. Existing tech or industry executives - Do you have strong relationships in your industry? I get that.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. What people don't know is how First Round got started and often people know less about the amazing background of one of its co-founders, Howard Morgan (everyone tends to know Josh Kopelman as one of the highest profile players in our industry overall).

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2010

Bill Gates once famously said that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the 1-year timeframe and underestimate its impact in the 10-year timeframe. I tend not to go into heat when I hear the latest buzz on the tech blogs about the latest gadgets. So I signed up for the online version of Weight Watchers.

Technical Review 278

Technical Review Software Review Startup SoCal 278