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.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

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. Lack of confidence? Camaraderie?

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 3, 2019

more in a Series B funding round, the company said Wednesday, in a round led by Palisades Growth Capital. According to X1, the new funding will go to hire aggressively in development and sales. X1 is led by CEO Craig Carpenter and CTO Brent Botta. Pasadena-based e-discovery software developer X1 has raised $5.1M

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2007

I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. I also found this interesting graphic of the changing needs around the CTO role in different size/type companies that somewhat echoes my experience. During Stabilization, often the focus is transitioning to a full-time CTO.

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socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2018

We spoke with Dave Fink , CEO and co-founder of Posite, and Jonathan Neddenriep , co-founder and CTO of the company, to learn more. Dave Fink: Postie is a building a technology platform with a mission of making direct mail marketing behave as easily and dynamically as your favorite, programmatic channels. What is Postie?

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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 ). It now seems that Mark is more firmly in control.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. 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.

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InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”. In today’s market, so much focus is placed on transacting business online. Why aren’t there a half-dozen well-funded startups running up your tailpipe?

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

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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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

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). And we wanted a head of global marketing. ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. He was seeking $500k.

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socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

What is it about the content delivery network market which has enabled Santa Monica-based EdgeCast to go from startup to over $100M in revenues in only a few, short years? We have 35 POPs all over the world, in every major market, and we have more than 6,000 customers today. We caught on with the right product, at the right time.

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socalTECH

JUNE 30, 2016

He's now hard at work at a new company, Kaleo, which is tackling the enterprise, knowledge sharing market�and already has an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers. We're trying to save companies money, and increase the productivity of employees. With Kaleo, I figured out from day one that we would need to raise outside funding.

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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. There's not many people on the market with those skills. What we'll then do, is we'll take that idea, and do lots of market validation. What they then immediately start to do, is prototype the product.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Being tenacious without the mental flexibility to pivot based on market feedback is a disaster. They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. And we’re lucky because they deliver many of the great products, services and content that we consume in our lives every day.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

But you’re not a great candidate to be funded by VCs then. One great solution I see is to hire an outstanding CFO who runs both. Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. .&# I find them strange. and my favorite].

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Here is where I see this really play out: Product Management. Most CEOs fancy their own product skills and like to weigh in on priorities. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. CEOs often meddle in products and dev teams hate it.

Startup 150

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socalTECH

JULY 22, 2016

What's your product, and what is it used for? Our products are designed for use by warehouse workers, retail staff, employees in manufacturing plants, by airlines, any place where people are moving boxes, picking and placing, shipping products, or getting things ready for pickup. It's kind of the two halves that got me here.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 A Different Kind of Incubator - The Hive I recently met with The Hive a new incubator in Orange County. What I really liked in my conversations with The Hive is that they are willing to work with and fund ventures that would never get VC dollars.

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socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2011

For this morning's interview, we spoke with Scot Richardson , CEO of Los Angeles-based LaughStub (www.laughstub.com), which develops software which helps comedy clubs and others manage ticket sales, online marketing, and customer relationship management. Scot Richardson: Yes, they've hired us, and we hope it's a good sign.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

You fill out the short questionnaire, lawyers submit their price quotes, and they get hired. It took a while to do market research, but we ended up starting an app for law. It sounds like you have some angel funding? Michael Chasin: We initially started with $30,000 in angel funding from an entrepreneur here in Los Angeles.

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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.

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CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 1, 2015

Sure, there are roles like CTO or CIO, but the input and decision making process has remained fairly static. With the trend to higher technology needs and the youth who are involved in the development of new technology, it is no longer unusual to walk into a board meeting and see a CTO in his early 40s. Today’s boardroom.

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 10, 2013

We''ve now reached critical mass in content, and in Asia we''re number three in the amount of information on products and suppliers online. We went from no suppliers to now over 160,000 suppliers, over two million products online. Michael Kleist: We''re seed funded, and have already raised money from twelve investors.

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socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

Ryan Blair: The theme around the fund is pretty simple. We want to have startups we can get productive or generating revenue pretty quickly. So, how is it you ended up going from a technology infrastructure entrepreneur at SkyPipeline, to the consumer market with Visalus? So where is the fund now? It's all about leverage.

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SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.

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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. We hired outside experts. Time will tell. If anything I’d like to fund 5 more teams and projects this ambitious.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

By spending more time educating your board on your business you get more valuable advice from them. 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.

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Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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. Brad Feld hadn’t written his seminal “ term sheet series &# and The Funded hadn’t yet been created. You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Growth will slow, partly due to internal limits and partly because the company is starting to bump up against the limits of the markets it serves.” ” There’s an allowance for a period of time where there’s “slow or no growth” while you’re figuring things out. I talked about some of that here.

Startup 390

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. Let’s talk about your product or let’s look at your financial projections. But that’s a digression.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. 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.

Startup 104

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SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. You’ll gauge people’s excitement level for the product and for various features. I might also be concerned about taking my idea directly to a large, well funded competitor who is know for innovation. You’ll discover flaws and hopefully correct them.

Startup 211

Startup IP Ideas Patents 211

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

You’ll learn about competitive products that exist or are being built. You’ll gauge people’s excitement level for the product and for various features. I might also be concerned about taking my idea directly to a large, well funded competitor who is know for innovation. You’ll discover flaws and hopefully correct them.

Startup 198

Startup IP Ideas Patents 198

socalTECH

MAY 2, 2017

He's the former CTO at Stocktwits, and he did the analysis and found out a lot of stuff. How's the startup funded? Andrew Bermudez: We are funded by the Tech Coast Angels, the ACE Fund, and K65, as well as Gil Amelio, the former CEO of Apple, as well as Sean Ellis of Dropbox and GrowthHackers, as well as other angels and entrepeneurs.

Sales 145

Sales Startup Email Tool 145

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. Building a product doesn’t get it distributed and sold. Expertise can be marketing, technical, financial, or sales.

Startup 101

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have a product description, that’s necessary, but not sufficient. 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.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

Tech Zulu Event

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Hours after the panelists debated the future of content distribution at the Silicon Beach @ USC conference, across campus at the Annenberg Innovation Lab a remarkable product demo was taking place by Coincident.TV. ScreenSync TV is just one product offering in the amazing portfolio of products Coincident has created.

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