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At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. It’s part of our job to ask questions about their plans, challenge their assumptions, and suggest paths to success. The innovator/developer relationship needs to be a conversation.
What does it mean to be a CTO for a startup? Should a startup CTO spend their time programming? The role of a CTO varies as the company matures. Here’s a graphic from Socal CTO that illustrates the roles as they change over time: In its earliest days, a startup’s top need is often to produce a product.
Using my StartupRoar as a radar, I came across a great post by Gabriel Weinberg Do you really need a full-timehire 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. In other words, they come in asking for help with sourcing and hiring.
I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up. I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures.
Based on my posts Startup CTO or Developer and Acting CTO , Chris O’Meara wrote an interesting post Startup CTO: Could It Work? They tend to know the operations side of a software business well enough to be the one overseeing deploys, crafting the infrastructure plans, and monitoring the health of the product.
I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Did they really need a Startup CTO or Developer or both? Did they have a Weak Development Team ? Did they have a Weak Development Team ? He had a partially built product.
The terms “CTO&# and “VP Engineering&# have such stigmas associated with what they are that I’m sure some people will feel uncomfortable with the definitions I’ve put forward. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?&#.
I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. Of course, I provide part-timeCTO services. So, I wanted to use this post to make it official - we are offering free startup CTO consulting sessions.
I talk to roughly 2 or 3 new startups every week who need advice from an experienced CTO. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. Of course, I provide part-timeCTO services. So, I wanted to use this post to make it official - we are offering free startup CTO consulting sessions.
I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. Third party products are used appropriately.
There was a lot of passion in the room last week when I presented Working with Developers at the Stubbs Precellerator. I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. But my developers want to go into way too much detail. Time Wasters - Don''t talk too much.
Would you create contracts without an attorney? The Tactical Technical Advisor stays on top of the development team to ensure that they’re team is building the right thing in a high-quality, efficient manner. This is especially important with outsourced development teams. Why do this without the right technical advisor?
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. Leverage Existing Platforms or Third Party Products - you want to test your social network, grab Drupal and whip something together, or even just use a hosted service.
million software developers worldwide. Given this diversity, it's important to be selective in the development services company with whom you choose to partner. You'll discover firms that are prolific in design/interface and light on development, and vice versa. How do they verify the ongoing progress of development?
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. They didn't feel they had visibility into timelines and costs for development of their software. The teams involved didn't seem to be exhibiting many of the Symptoms of a Weak Development Team.
I was just interviewed by Frank Peters - Tony Karrer and the Founder-Developer Gap. 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. This is somewhat the heart of what a CTO does. What Should You Do?
Redondo Beach-based iCONECT Development , a developer of litigation support software, said this morning that it has hired on former X1 Technologies Vice President Howard G. iCONECT will open a Los Angeles office with Silver's hire. Silver as its Chief Technology Officer.
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. About 18 months ago, the entire group began to mention that they were having more difficulty finding good developers.
TechEmpower has been instrumental in developing chatbots like these, utilizing generative AI to sift through internal documents and user manuals, enabling them to provide precise answers to customer service questions. It also facilitates rapid prototyping, allowing for quicker iterations and thus shorter development cycles.
This is not only sad but incredibly frustrating, because it is so easy to see how a great technology can be developed and commercialized if only - if only the CTO hadn't been impulsive and insecure and brought on a business partner too early in the game. … And it’s not just inexperienced CTOs. Perhaps all of the above.
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. They both would have lots of thoughts and ideas. What type of shares?
So, here goes: Dr. Tony Karrer Over the past 15 years, Tony has been a part-timeCTO for more than 30 startups. Most notably, he was the original CTO for eHarmony for its first four years making him partly responsible for more than 4% of the marriages every year. Tony has a Ph.D. As a Startup, you have one shot.
"I'm looking for a partner / cofounder who can not only head the technical aspects and build a working model of the site, but someone with the connections to put a great development team together when we need it. Make sure you go through the 32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder. Find out who is good.
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. They both would have lots of thoughts and ideas. What type of shares?
Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. You hire great people. You motivate, cajole, reassign tasks, hire, fire and push the organization forward. And then there’s product management. Engineering?
Gradient X , the online mobile marketing and advertising technology developer backed by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, Crosscut Ventures, Founder Collective, Double M Capital, Baroda Ventures, Siemer Ventures, and others, has snapped up some talent from OpenX with its latest hire. READ MORE>>.
Goleta-based Transphorm , which develops high voltage, Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors, has received $18.5M in a contract from the U.S. According to Transphorm, the Office of Naval Resaerch--part of the U.S. base contract with the company, which will go to establish a domestic source of Gallium Nitride epiwafers.
San Diego-based eSUB Construction Software --fresh off a $12M funding round --says it has hired on a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO), to help it development its platform. Henricks was most recently Senior Vice President of Engineering at Verimatrix, and also had been Vice President of Engineering at TriTech Software Systems.
I''ve written before about finding Web Development Firms in Los Angeles. I just got an email asking about exactly this: I''m with a new company that needs some software built, but doesn''t need (or have the resources for) a large staff of software developers. You will find firms that are design/interface heavy and light on development.
Just saw a great post by Mark Geller - Developers wanted… in Los Angeles, U.S.A. you can get to know Mark a bit more in my post Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller ). Mark tells us: there is a lot of demand for developers right here in L.A. Likely a lot of time and effort. who would love to talk with you.
Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. 8220; His three things (worth reading his whole post anyway) are set vision/strategy and communicate broadly, recruit/hire/retain top talent, and make sure there’s enough cash in the bank. It’s great advice.
San Diego-based Skinit , a developer of personalized "skins" for electronic items, reports today that it has hired on Stanford Au, former SVP of technology at Shutterfly, as its Chief Technology Officer. Au was behind Shutterfly's Photobook line of products, and also held the position of VP of Products at WebEx.
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.
Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment. This is actually fairly common and I think it’s a bit challenging in that the technology roles (from technology advisor to CTO) in a startup vary widely.
You can’t afford and don’t want to hire a full-timeCTO or architect. While Bob’s post focuses on Technology Advisors and the Startup Founder Developer Gap , we also discussed advisors more broadly. Through this he defined aspects like “deep dives into our marketing strategy” and “product feedback and product strategy.”
At Silicon Beach Fest Hollywood 2012 Kevin Winston organized a panel called “How to Find and Hire a Developer”. Always have a developer do a test project before hiring them to make sure they deliver quality work. One method to negotiate a lower rate or no cost to have a developerwork with you > Pre sell your product.
Los Angeles-based electric vehicle developer Fisker Inc. --the the latest incarnation of Fisker--says it has opened up a new "technology center" in San Francisco, which it says will help support design and engineering of software systems for the Fisker Ocean SUV and future products. READ MORE>>.
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 ). It now seems that Mark is more firmly in control.
skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 27, 2007 Stanford Podcasts - eHarmony - Greg Waldorf I was just pointed to a set of great podcasts done by Stanford B-School and particularly, I just listed to the podcast by eHarmonys Greg Waldorf. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO.
skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Friday, March 9, 2007 Map of VC Investments Found this Map of 2006 VC Investments post. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?
Tony Karrer is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower , a Los Angeles Web Development firm, and is considered one of the top technologists in e-Learning. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO?
According to Jon Zerden, the company's CTO, the firm is aggressively hiring for technology and product positions at the new location. The firm said the new location will focus on developing the software that runs its advanced gym equipment, as well as online wellness software for its corporate clients.
skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 About this Blog Ive been thinking about doing a blog with my thoughts on technology and whats happening in the Los Angeles area technology scene for a while, but it was Ben Kuos recent start of a blog that inspired me to actually go ahead and do it. Thanks Ben.
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. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony.
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