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Interview with Michael Wong, MergeLocal

socalTECH

Michael Wong: I was previously CTO of an agency called Breakthrough Ads. My cofounder, Steven Elliott, was CTO of a company doing artificial intelligence and automated chat technology. My other co-founder, Rusty Jenkins, was also with that company, doing sales. Can you talk about how your company is funded?

CTO Coach 223
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Finding a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup

SoCal CTO

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? Your technical advisor can likely help.

CTO Hire 211
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Why Solving Big Food & Healthcare Problems Will Yield Spectacular Companies

Both Sides of the Table

I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. In short, we’re after venture returns. They have raised $14 million to date.

Company 207
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Here is How to Make Sense of Conflicting Startup Advice

Both Sides of the Table

Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. On sales I often talk about “ Why Buy Anything, Why Buy Now, Why Buy Me ” as a tool to think about a sales process. Fund raising ? What is a founder to do?

Startup 407
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Be Careful About Being a Meddling Startup CEO

Both Sides of the Table

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Another area we CEOs often meddle is in sales. I did this.

Startup 150
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How Beatshare Is Tackling Music And Messaging

socalTECH

Photo: Barry Lieberman, President and COO; Eli Aizenstat, Founder & CEO; and Rob Patrick, CTO). Barry Lieberman: My backgruond is about 35 years in technology, business development, and sales and marketing. Barry was a lead mentor there at Chapman University's Launch Labs, and we paired up. What is Beatshare?

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Venture Capital is About Human Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Most VCs did well academically and had enough career success that a venture firm was willing to give them an investment role or they were able to raise their own fund. For some of my more skeptical portfolio companies I simply asked them to run a trial of inbound sales calls and they were shocked.