Remove CTO Coach Remove Customer Remove Product Remove Web
article thumbnail

Lead Developer to CTO at a Startup

SoCal CTO

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. Accounting?

CTO Coach 231
article thumbnail

Hiring Developers Before Product/Market Fit?

SoCal CTO

Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. The problem is you don't yet have product/market fit, and until you do, you don't really know what to build. When product vision is truly clear, then it makes sense to execute it, and hiring follows.

CTO Hire 205
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder

SoCal CTO

Investors my tell you that, but what they can look at your product on paper and tell what it does and they will understand if it can be built. The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. We end up using WordPress a lot as the marketing front-end of our web sites.

article thumbnail

Document Your MVP for a Developer

SoCal CTO

I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. Founder : Ummm. what do you mean?

Develop 354
article thumbnail

Top 120 Startup Posts for 2010

SoCal CTO

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc. 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication?

Startup 378
article thumbnail

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

Both Sides of the Table

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). ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan.

CTO Coach 359
article thumbnail

Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP

SoCal CTO

Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? Do you have a Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One ? They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build.

CTO Coach 219