SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 150

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2012

Using my StartupRoar as a radar, I came across a great post by Gabriel Weinberg Do you really need a full-time hire for that? Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. The startup founder is definitely not ready to hire a CTO.

CTO Hire 205

CTO Hire Outsource Development CTO Coach Develop 205

TechEmpower

JULY 24, 2023

” Of course, it’s more complicated than just checking boxes on a question list. Still, if you’re a business leader and your developers haven’t asked you these questions, look for a Fractional CTO to help navigate the critical early stage of development. How are you funding this? Administer users?

Develop 520

Develop Development Technical Review SEO 520

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. 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 ? He needed some kind of CTO and as well Developers.

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

TechCrunch LA

JANUARY 26, 2022

The email recounts some of the company’s recent mistakes, including prioritizing strategic projects that “distracted” the company from its core beauty business and that executives “got ahead of ourselves on hiring.”. The tech team layoffs are notable for a beauty retailer that has often described itself as a technology company.

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CTO Hire Layoffs Commerce Email 197

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

I've talked about that in lots of other posts, so you can visit some of these to help determine what you specifically need: Startup CTO or Developer Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything Key ingredients in the equation are: How complex is the system? The good news is that likely is not what they want.

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CTO Hire CTO Coach Startup Equity 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula. For example, suppose you're just two founders and you want to hire an additional hacker who's so good you feel he'll increase the average outcome of the whole company by 20%. n = (1.2 - 1)/1.2 =.167. and we have 11.1%

Equity 391

Equity CTO Hire Startup Examples 391

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). and Microsoft had become.

CTO Hire 309

CTO Hire Organization Google Course 309

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

Thus the real discussion must start with who will be doing the work, providing the funding, and delivering results. Level of responsibility and time allocated. Cofounders only able to work part-time, with responsibility and major income sources elsewhere, don’t carry the same risk as others with more operational responsibility.

Equity 99

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

Thus the real discussion must start with who will be doing the work, providing the funding, and delivering results. Level of responsibility and time allocated. Co-founders only able to work part-time, with responsibility and major income sources elsewhere, don’t carry the same risk as others with more operational responsibility.

Startup 174

Startup Equity Patents CTO Hire 174

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You hire people who look good on paper. So one of the surest signs you’ve hired a leader is the willingness of his or her former team to re-assemble. After 6 months – you know. You REALLY know.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? that talked about a recent NY Times article When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny. eHarmongy) as an acting CTO.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have neither, and choose to approach an investor, you will get no attention, and probably never again get a shot at funding with that investor. Now investors will pay attention, since scale-up funding is less risky and has a time frame.

Funding 112

Funding Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire 112

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

.” When Elon Musk set out to build SpaceX he wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm from the space community not used to having a private enterprise challenge the government funded space exploration of NASA. Of course the naysayers are out again. We hired outside experts. Time will tell. Now they are partners.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

” Of course I agree with this. Of course by the next quarter if I felt ripped off I could advocate for 7% or maybe ops requirements needed to be upped to 20% for one quarter. Of course we fancy ourselves as the best sales people in the company. And of course the VP of Sales had the ultimate call.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 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. If your idea is so amazing that it warrants my hard-earned angel money or the money of my LP investors from our fund then why should I take a risk on you if you won’t take a risk on yourself? Why should I be? I finally called bullshit.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

The Internet doesn't work right, and is broken, and without a CDN, you can't do what you need to do if you're the CTO of a large website. James Segil: There's a couple of things to consider with growth, around what does it take to fund a company's growth. We're in the domain of hiring relatively technical people, gearheads.

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CTO Hire Content Networking Web 248

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

Thus the real discussion must start with who will be doing the work, providing the funding, and delivering results. Level of responsibility and time allocated. Co-founders only able to work part-time, with responsibility and major income sources elsewhere, don’t carry the same risk as others with more operational responsibility.

Equity 95

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 95

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Because I am true to the hiring practices I preach, I wanted a strong exec who would “ punch above their weightclass ” by taking a job they hadn’t yet done but would hugely aspire to and thus work harder to out perform. So I asked Ethan to build his product first and then we would fund. He was seeking $500k.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

socalTECH

MARCH 8, 2013

We now have seven companies, and have our own venture fund as well, and we'll be doing four or five for the next few years. We have our own small seed fund, which we trigger to fund that company and hire a team, a CEO and a CTO. On the customer side, we have companies like Samsung, GE, Kaiser Permanente, Accenture.

Incubator 208

Incubator Startup CTO Hire Ideas 208

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Good entrepreneurs can admit when their course of action was wrong and learn from it. 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. But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2012

Running a new business starts with building a solid and credible business plan, working the investor funding process, and building an organization from nothing, with minimal resources. Sacrifice and time commitment. Who will be the CEO, CFO, and CTO? The next big challenge for a multi-partner startup is the allocation of roles.

Startup 101

Startup Entrepreneur Equity CTO Hire 101

socalTECH

MAY 2, 2017

He's the former CTO at Stocktwits, and he did the analysis and found out a lot of stuff. We continued to enhance our software to make it easier for them to follow the steps to cash in on credits, and of course, by following those steps they were able to predictably close more deals. How's the startup funded?

Sales 145

Sales Startup Email Tool 145

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

Ryan Blair: The theme around the fund is pretty simple. Of course, not all VCs are like that, and I've started some good relationships with them, but others are complete a**holes. So, how is it you ended up going from a technology infrastructure entrepreneur at SkyPipeline, to the consumer market with Visalus?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2014

Thus the real discussion must start with who will be doing the work, providing the funding and delivering results. Level of responsibility and time allocated. Co-founders only able to work part-time, with responsibility and major income sources elsewhere, don’t carry the same risk as others with more operational responsibility.

Equity 104

Equity Patents Startup CTO Hire 104

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. And of course on Twitter I’ve seen the Tweets, ReTweets and superlatives on what a great post it is. LPs (the people who invest in VC funds) want to know what “hot” deals you’re in.

Startup 390

Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

Thus the real discussion must start with who will be doing the work, providing the funding, and delivering results. Level of responsibility and time allocated. Co-founders only able to work part-time, with responsibility and major income sources elsewhere, don’t carry the same risk as others with more operational responsibility.

Equity 62

Equity Startup Patents CTO Hire 62

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Running a new business starts with building a solid and credible business plan, working the investor funding process, and building an organization from nothing, with minimal resources. Sacrifice and time commitment. Who will be the CEO, CFO, and CTO? The next big challenge for a multi-partner startup is the allocation of roles.

Equity 91

Equity Startup CTO Hire CTO Coach 91

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. The company provides SAT, ACT, and other similar test preparation courses and related software. It might not be problems in geometry, it might be because students can't add fractions in algebra.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have neither, and choose to approach an investor, you will get no attention, and probably never again get a shot at funding with that investor. Now investors will pay attention, since scale-up funding is less risky and has a time frame.

Startup 104

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 104

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 will soon announce a few fundings (not yet closed, sorry) and I’m beginning to help them think about how to ramp up their engineering teams. Of course I could go on and on. Roger Ehrenberg. Fred Wilson.

Networking 366

Networking Startup CTO Coach Email 366

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

If you have existing investors of course you feel a degree of comfort knowing that they would likely have your back in tough times — but of course you never really know. Fund raising is hard for everybody. Very, very few founders have an easy time despite what you read in the press.

Funding 238

Funding Venture Capital Startup Course 238

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have neither, and choose to approach an investor, you will get no attention, and probably never again get a shot at funding with that investor. Now investors will pay attention, since scale-up funding is less risky and has a time frame.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

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. I taught a somewhat crazy course about writing and deploying a scalable website in Ruby on Rails and deploying it in EC2.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Every investor expects to see some traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have neither, and choose to approach an investor, you will get no attention, and probably never again get a shot at funding with that investor. It will be wrong, so count on iterating, but you learn something each time, and that is traction.

Tips 88

Tips Startup CTO Hire Press 88

SoCal CTO

JUNE 26, 2012

I've done four Free CTO Consulting Sessions in the past month with startup founders who all had run into variations of the same problem. And we are not even moving yet on the the next big release that I have to have to get my next round of funding. My belief is that you shouldn't sign that contract.

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Outsource Development Software Development Develop Development 254

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 31, 2011

We also had awesome group of mentors that included: David Waxman (Co-founder of PeoplePC, Spot Runner and Firefly Network), Paige Craig (CEO of BetterWorks ), Josh MacAdam (Co-founder/CTO at Ming.ly If Avesta sees someone drinking Coloft coffee (organic of course), he quickly asks if they’ve sold anything. is also hiring.

Los Angeles 73

Los Angeles Startup Angel Tech Coast Angels 73