Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

So, the first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you “deserve” 90% of the equity. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. Level of responsibility and time allocated.

Equity 99

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

SoCal CTO

MAY 27, 2010

I received a follow-up question from an early-stage startup about the Founder Developer Gap that I’ve described before and that was part of the interview with Frank. There are a bunch of questions in Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything and in Startup CTO or Developer. It’s a painful situation.

CTO Hire 170

CTO Hire Develop Development Startup 170

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

So the first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you “deserve” 90% of the equity. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. Level of responsibility and time allocated.

Startup 174

Startup Equity Patents CTO Hire 174

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2013

This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Both of these qualms are wrong and shortsighted. Partial acquisition.

Acquisition 88

Acquisition CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development 88

socalTECH

MARCH 8, 2013

DatAllegro was one of the first companies in what is now the "big data" industry, and helped to pioneer the entire segment. Now, Frost has set up shop buildling out a whole series of companies in the industry, and we caught up with him to learn more about the companies (Predixion Software, Cirro, Lineage, Kumo, etc.)

Incubator 208

Incubator Startup CTO Hire Ideas 208

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Both of these qualms are wrong and shortsighted. External scanning for resources.

CTO Hire 91

CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development Resource 91

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 Finding Good Developers in Los Angeles? Im part of a CTO group that meets once a month to discuss various topics. If anyone has ideas on how to reach into to find candidates or other ways to find good people, I would love to hear it.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles CTO Hire CTO Coach Develop 150

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. Great companies are comprised of great individual point people or functional leaders. There are plenty of great leaders who work really hard and work for big companies. It’s lost salary for a period of time. Why should I be?

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks? This is going to be fairly specific to the company.

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks? This is going to be fairly specific to the company.

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Sunday, February 25, 2007 Interesting Model for University President Saw a post by Paul Kedrosky pointing us to Graeme Thickins on How Stanford Does It. Its interesting to think about how universities might want to have their staff better aligned with moving ideas from the lab to start-ups.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

So the first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you “deserve” 90% of the equity. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. Level of responsibility and time allocated.

Equity 95

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 95

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

This is part of my Startup Advice series. I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI. (In I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. So we discussed his ideas several times.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

I’m super excited to announce that GRP Partners led the investment in Ethan Anderson’s new company MyTime (link has LA-based merchants but will give you a good feel for the product). BuildOnline (the company I founded) has just announcement plans to be more aggressive in growing in the US. Let me not bury the lede.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Ryan was the most talented technologist we had hired at BuildOnline. We hired Ryan at a really young age and without a tremendous amount of prior experience. I had to make a choice.

CTO Hire 322

CTO Hire Startup Resource Entrepreneur 322

socalTECH

JANUARY 3, 2011

Jamie tells us the interesting story behind how the company started plus how the company managed to quickly land investor interest. Will had this idea about unsubscriptions, and formulating an idea around creating a way to unsubscribe people from newsletters, and he started talking to me about it. We raised $2.1M

Newsletter 216

Newsletter Startup CTO Hire Blogging 216

socalTECH

JULY 23, 2012

As a hiring manager, and as the former CTO of Buy.com, Navid Nobakht , Co-Founder of Recmnd.Me ([link] had a problem--how to really figure out if someone he was hiring could actually execute. The problem we're trying to solve, is one I found from in my experience as a hiring manager in the IT industry.

CTO Hire 147

CTO Hire Startup Sites Technical Review 147

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. Working at a big company is honorable and I don’t believe the narrative that all of this tech disruption is to kill off big companies. Now they are partners.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.

CTO Coach 28

CTO Coach CTO Hire Outsource Development Mentor 28

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. Take a look at other sites: [link] But the overall idea is to provide branded search in order to get merchandise from your artist, star, etc. in Computer Science.

CTO Coach 150

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Sunday, February 25, 2007 Challenge of Predicting Winners I just read a bit on the payout to YouTube from the Google Acquisition ( Internet News , CNN ). But even if you came to me with that idea, Im not sure I would have bought it. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

We spoke with Michael Chasin, the company''s co-founder, about the startup. You fill out the short questionnaire, lawyers submit their price quotes, and they get hired. One day, I was talking with a friend who was trying to develop and app for a school event, and had created his own app creation company. What''s LawKick about?

Help 240

Help Startup CTO Hire Pricing 240

socalTECH

JANUARY 25, 2016

Becka Klauber Richter is co-founder of the startup, and spoke to us about the company, which she co-founded with Kasey Edwards. What's your background, how did you start the company? We wanted to bring together the babysitters and nannies in the community, and started working with them as contracts. What is Helpr?

Demand 100

Demand CTO Coach Screening CTO Hire 100

socalTECH

MARCH 1, 2013

We spoke with CEO Darren Marble to learn more about why analytics are important to the modern film-maker, and how the company is helping. Most of these guys have no idea who they are marketing to. Darren Marble: I spent the last ten years in enterprise sales, selling enterprise software and services to Fortune 500 companies.

Hollywood 256

Hollywood CTO Hire Social Media Platform 256

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Eventually a successful startup will grow into a big company. Growth will slow, partly due to internal limits and partly because the company is starting to bump up against the limits of the markets it serves.” The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions. Growth, again. ” Escape velocity.

Startup 390

Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

SoCal CTO

JULY 23, 2012

I seem to encounter a lot of people who want to attach a CTO label to me as I'm the only programmer on the founding team of three. While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit. Who will do that?

CTO Coach 231

CTO Coach CTO Hire Outsource Development Develop 231

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

The first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you “deserve” 90 percent of the equity. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so there is no equity value in the idea alone. Level of responsibility and time allocated.

Equity 104

Equity Patents Startup CTO Hire 104

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

So the first question I usually get is what percent of the company or equity is that person worth? Just because it was your idea doesn’t mean you “deserve” 90% of the equity. The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. Level of responsibility and time allocated.

Equity 62

Equity Startup Patents CTO Hire 62

socalTECH

JUNE 9, 2014

We caught up with Lee Essner , the President of Jukin Media, to learn more about how the company thinks it has figured out how to make a business round viral videos. That''s where the traditional media companies--the morning shows, the news clips shows, the ad agencies--can see what is viral and trending, and can license it directly from us.

Media 235

Media Content Startup IP 235

socalTECH

JUNE 30, 2016

Phil Hui-Bon-Hoa , the CEO of El Segundo-based Kaleo (www.kaleo.com), is a serial entrepreneur who has previously built and sold four companies, including one acquired by IFILM, and another by Sun Microsystems. That ends up being a waste of time, especially in larger enterprises. How did the company start?

El Segundo 169

El Segundo Southern California Startup CTO Hire 169

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 14, 2009

If you have solid web skills and a few years experience, either with a commercial company or running your own legit projects, there are dozens of companies in L.A. I’ll give you equity in the company.” Mark tells us: there is a lot of demand for developers right here in L.A. who would love to talk with you. They haven’t.

Software Development 150

Software Development Develop Development Software 150

socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

One of the biggest areas where the cloud is transforming business is in small and medium sized businesses--where suddenly, companies are able to leverage software which wouldn''t be available, or are too costly for them to implement individually, but where the cloud access suddenly makes it affordable and easy. Thanks, and good luck!

Startup 160

Startup El Segundo CTO Hire Outsource Development 160

socalTECH

MARCH 31, 2014

In today''s electronic world, there is an immense number of data sources creating millions of data points that companies are hoping to make sense of. There are lots of products that might look for any mention of a product name or company name, and yes, we do that--but more importantly, we are also analyzing situations that arise.

Orange County 245

Orange County Startup News IBM 245

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

I spent an hour on the phone working with Sam Rosen, the CEO of MakeSpace on a senior exec he is considering hiring. I spent an hour across two phone calls with him telling him why I believe MakeSpace will be a billion dollar company (which I do). You might first seek to meet your peer group in comparable jobs at similar companies.

Networking 366

Networking Startup CTO Coach Email 366

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. Many people go back with lots of new ideas, experience, and energy. If you haven’t already subscribed yet, subscribe now for.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Other founders, “as a privately held company we don’t disclose our valuation.&# Me, “dude, I’m not a journalist. No option pool shuffle. No hidden terms.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405