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. Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Partial acquisition.

Acquisition 88

Acquisition CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development 88

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. Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Partial acquisition.

CTO Hire 91

CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development Resource 91

socalTECH

JUNE 9, 2014

We then help push those videos through social media channels, and help them go viral. That''s relevant, because of our third piece, where we have been hired by traditional media companies, to basically provide them a turnkey, outsources content acquisition team. Lee Essner: That''s one of the competitive edges we have.

Media 235

Media Content Startup IP 235

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

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. But Ethan had left by the time of the acquisition. Nice sweep!

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2014

Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. Marty Zwilling.

Software Review 107

Software Review Entrepreneur CTO Hire Outsource Development 107

socalTECH

OCTOBER 10, 2013

The crux of it is we help buyers user their network to verify suppliers, primarily in Asia and China, where we started. We''ll mostly be doing enterprise sales here, but also looking at the technology and design front, hiring better talent, taking design to a new level than maybe what we are in China. What is Tradesparq?

Southern California 170

Southern California Startup SoCal CTO Hire 170

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do.

Software Review 103

Software Review Equity CTO Hire Outsource Development 103

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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

JUNE 29, 2011

Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do.

Software Review 96

Software Review CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development 96

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2010

Even if you are looking in all the right places, it helps to know what you are looking for. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. Marty Zwilling.

Software Review 92

Software Review CTO Hire Outsource Development Startup 92

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. Startups that come to me and ask me to sign an NDA in order to get Free Startup CTO Consulting really are missing it. The Top Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Learn About IP Law What Can a Well Drafted Contract Do For Your Company?

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. Startups that come to me and ask me to sign an NDA in order to get Free Startup CTO Consulting really are missing it. The Top Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Should Learn About IP Law What Can a Well Drafted Contract Do For Your Company?

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

What our program does, is if you get a question wrong, we help determine where you need help. It might not be problems in geometry, it might be because students can't add fractions in algebra. So, we give basic instruction and then signal teachers on where to better focus their classroom time.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

socalTECH

MARCH 31, 2014

We''re looking for lighting bolts in time which are important. Whether that''s for competitive analysis or market analysis, our product is basically able to monitor--on a very large scale--things that are important to your particular company. I was hired to head up strategy, marketing development, and product management.

Orange County 245

Orange County Startup News IBM 245

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Leading advertising networks like Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network, ShareASale and many others license our platform to help their advertisers and publishers easily create, manage, track, and optimize call-based advertising campaigns.”. Who do you view as your biggest competition? Our platform helps them do that.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company. It was accept the terms or go into bankruptcy so we took the money. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

socalTECH

JULY 23, 2009

It's somewhat unusual in this economy to find companies who are seeing strong growth, so we were intrigued recently in running into BlackLine Systems (www.blackline.com), a firm which develops software for helping in the financial reporting process. I had actually retired from SunGard as CTO before starting BlackLine.

Startup 124

Startup Software Review CTO Hire Oracle 124

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

” Bill Gross, who is one of the Godfathers of the Internet, once told me, “ If you don’t design a product that is 10x better than the competition then you’ll never build anything truly big or amazing.” ” That’s what we’ve set out to build at MakeSpace. 10x the experience. I’m long NY.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

We were over 2x up on this round, and we also had a bunch of individual investors who wanted to put in--people who had invested in our competition a few years ago. It's a great time for that, because there's lots of talent out there. We were oversubscribed, and had a stack of term sheets.

Startup 113

Startup CTO Hire Resource Venture Capital 113

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

He listed all of the product releases that were up coming, the customers that were in the pipeline and where he saw his competition moving. Your highest priority right now is hiring the 1 or 2 people that are going to join your company and make a difference. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. thought it would be helpful to put some of my thoughts into a blog post and hopefully spur some conversation in the comments and over email.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

Very, very few founders have an easy time despite what you read in the press. Knowing that now will help you greatly in your dark moments to know that you’re not the only one struggling. Also, make sure you know several partners at the VC firms who have invested in you because in tough times it helps to have very broad support.

Funding 238

Funding Venture Capital Startup Course 238

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

The conversations bleed into the sales messages the next time, they wend their way into software designs and form the plan of attach against competition. CEO, VP Products and CTO must all be in the physical location. I prefer the first sales hires to be in the home office. Here are my personal biases: 1.

Technical Advisors 335

Technical Advisors Outsource Development Offshore Startup 335