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.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. “Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? .” After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital!

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Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

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. You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. Working hard together at a big company just isn’t the same.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

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 ). Onward & upward DataSift. Startup Lessons'

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. We hired OSHA regulatory lawyers.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. In the book they profile how VC worked in the early days (60s / 70s).

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

It’s the company that evokes fear into more startups and venture capitalists looking to fund eCommerce businesses than any other potential competitor. Sam moved back to NY and we announced our seed round of capital, which we led. Every pitch I’ve ever seen has led to the, “Would Amazon eventually do this?

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Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. Too often, however, I have found CTO / Founders paired with business people who not only don't add value, but frequently detract from the value of the business.

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SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. While I agree that many VCs are crummy seed investors, I think there are some that are excellent seed investors. How it happens.

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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. Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. What Rob wrote in his post is right. Rob does it. On steroids. Always seek input.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. I'm Tired of Creating Your Content - Babbling VC , November 12, 2010 Jeff triggered this post in regards to his Check-in Fatigue on Foursquare.

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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. We have our own small seed fund, which we trigger to fund that company and hire a team, a CEO and a CTO. It's been great. Why is Big Data taking off, and why the interest in this area?

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Incubator Startup CTO Hire Ideas 208

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Your highest priority right now is hiring the 1 or 2 people that are going to join your company and make a difference. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. I need to take some VC meetings. I just don’t have enough time to focus on it right now. The business leaders need to do their parts.

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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

JANUARY 28, 2011

So yes, I want to hire somebody with really high IQ and EQ but not somebody who is more knowledgeable at your specific skill set than you are. What results must you have in order to raise venture capital or garner good press coverage that helps drive customer acquisition (and also more funding!)? Is it book smarts?

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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

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socalTECH

JANUARY 3, 2011

in funding from Charles River Ventures, First Round Capital, DFJ Frontier, and angel investors. So, we put something together, and put in some money, and literally the next day I was out to breakfast with Josh Roth, the former CTO of Rent.com and NTI Group, and Josh was also looking for something to do. Jamie, thanks.

Newsletter 216

Newsletter Startup CTO Hire Blogging 216

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

years as a VC, “You don’t want to raise money from me. They got their round done anyway from a big late-stage VC. One of the large parts of the burn was PR, Marketing and attending conferences. As I said, there are VCs who are fooled by all this but it doesn’t equal success.

Entrepreneur 286

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socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

I founded that with the former CTO of my first company, Kevin Smilak, who now works at Google. We were hired by a company that did outsourced medical billing and consulting for physicial medicine and rehab doctors. Dan Rodrigues: Yes, we''ve raised around $70M in venture funding to date.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which: bank, office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC. The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#.

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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

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

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

s first accelerator called The Fort and raised VC funding. They took the “Match.com for entrepreneurs” model literally and hired the former CTO of Match.com to create the algorithms to help predict and recommend matches. Soon after CoFoundersLab was accepted into D.C.’s

Entrepreneur 87

Entrepreneur Santa Monica Startup CTO Hire 87

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

After my first Tweet with the Notorious mothafucka quote , I thought about my role as a VC and I Tweeted the following. I spent an hour on the phone working with Sam Rosen, the CEO of MakeSpace on a senior exec he is considering hiring. It came from my weekend activities. So I connected her with two CEOs and a CFO.

Networking 366

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socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. It was us, funding ourselves from credit cards, literally, to a company that is now on par with Kaplan and Princeton Review. How did you manage the growth you have, without outside funding?

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

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. That led us to venture capital as opposed to trying to bootstrap ourselves. Hiring is difficult no matter where you are.

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Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

The firm is announcing a substantial Series D funding round today, so we spoke with the firm's CEO, Jason Howe, to get the details on the company and what it's doing. Congrats on funding. Jason Howe: What we do at Awarepoint is, at the 10,000 foot level, is RTLS - Real Time Location Services. Explain what your products do?

Startup 113

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InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

At CallWave, Colin was CTO, Jason was CFO and I was in charge of product marketing and customer acquisition. Why aren’t there a half-dozen well-funded startups running up your tailpipe? When we raised our Series A, we put a lot of effort into meeting with VC’s to find the right fit for us. We met with a ton of VC’s and angels.

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Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

► August (3) Venture Capital - What's the rush? the Rubicon Project (Internet Advertising Technology) Status: Pre-Launch Visit the Rubicon Project Website Startup 5.0: StrongMail Systems (Digital Messsaging Infrastructure Software) Status: VC-backed (Sequoia Capital, Globespan and Evercore) Lesson: Trust your gut. .

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