SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2012

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

CTO Hire Outsource Development CTO Coach Develop 205

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

Because more technology people probably read startup blogs I’m guessing this post will come under more scrutiny. 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. Experience.

CTO Hire 400

CTO Hire Fractional VPE Startup Outsource Development 400

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers." I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." " One was an enterprise software product.

Customer 227

Customer Custom CTO Coach Startup 227

SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2012

So, here goes: Dr. Tony Karrer Over the past 15 years, Tony has been a part-time CTO 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. What is our lifetime customer value and how can we drive that up?

CTO Hire 175

CTO Hire Startup Metrics eHarmony 175

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

Motive provides conversational text messaging used by e-commerce brands to simulate human interaction with customers, with the aim of preventing cart abandonment, promote new sales and product releases, and more. Wald was previously at SalesLoft and Salesforce, and Pylnev was formerly at Honest Company and SpaceX.

Chief Technology Officer 113

Chief Technology Officer SpaceX Commerce Los Angeles 113

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 5, 2018

Scott McCorkle has spent most of his professional career thinking about business to business software and how to improve it for a company’s customers. If customers are doing the things i want them to be doing through my product. If customers are doing the things i want them to be doing through my product.

Chief Technology Officer 145

Chief Technology Officer SaaS Metrics Customer 145

socalTECH

APRIL 24, 2013

Newport Beach-based software defined networking (SDN) technology developer Jeda Networks has announced its first product, the Fabric Network Controller (FNC). Jeda, which is led by storage veteran Stuart Berman, said its product is a software-only product which creates a high-performance, storage network over high speed Ethernet.

Networking 147

Networking Product Miramar Software 147

TechEmpower

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Enhancing Front-End Product Search We also developed a front-end search tool that revolutionized the way users search for products. Even if certain categories aren't predefined in the database, users still receive relevant product suggestions. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas

Generative AI 346

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Tool Knowledge Base 346

socalTECH

MAY 28, 2013

To bring that ability to name your own price on products, Los Angeles-based Greentoe (www.greentoe.com) recently launched, allowing consumers to name their own price to retailers of everything from electronics to baby products. Joe Marrapodi: GreenToe is a name your own price marketplace for products. What is Greentoe?

Pricing 273

Pricing Product Help Sales 273

SoCal Tech Calendar

JANUARY 11, 2012

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 -- Managing Your Product/Service Lifecycle. Your product is just about to go out the door. But how do you ensure that your product or service is what the customer really wants, needs and will pay for? Youre reviewing your launch plan and task assignments.

Product 100

Product Services TechEmpower Competition 100

socalTECH

MAY 17, 2013

Among executives at the firm are Kenn Stearns (eRealty), who joins as Chief Product Officer; Saro Vasudevan (Capital One), Chief Customer and Credit Officer; David Subar (BreakMedia, Interthinx), as Interim Chief Technology Officer; and Michael Barton (Startup Exchange, TicketMaster-CitySearch), who joins the firm as Chief Operating Officer.

Chief Technology Officer 215

Chief Technology Officer CitySearch Ticketmaster Santa Monica 215

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 9, 2022

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to getting ahold of an appointment for your hair or another treatment…that’s a different story: The bespoke nature of a lot of the work has meant that a large swathe of the professionals providing these services have stayed offline when it comes to interfacing with customers.

Help 195

Help Startup UCLA Tool 195

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 11, 2020

“In a world where gaming studios have long used third-party engines to power their front-end development, it makes no sense for the same studios to spend millions of dollars to build their own custom back-end,” said Kevin Zhang, partner at Upfront Ventures and board member at Pragma, in a statement.

Riot Games 135

Riot Games Develop Development Company 135

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

As part of the deal, Exym founder Matt DeBeer will become CTO of the company, focused on product strategy and customer advocacy, and Alpine'sd Nick Horn will become CEO. Terms of the deal were not announced. According to Exym, the transaction is with Alpine Investors V, VI, and VI-A, LP. Exym was founded in 2004. READ MORE>>.

Funding 113

Funding Equity Los Angeles Software 113

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2011

Nirvanix said it has appointed Paul Froutan as its Chief Technology Officer, reporting to President and CEO Scott Genereux. Froutan also previously served as Vice President of Product Development at Rackspace Hosting. Nirvanix is a provider of cloud storage services, in particular for SMB and enterprise customers.

Google 133

Google Chief Technology Officer San Diego Report 133

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2010

I recently wrote a post about avoiding the “ Deferred Life Plan &# and some related thoughts about personal productivity that came from Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four Hour Workweek. I would love to say that I’m the productivity guru. Tim Ferriss gave this extra emphasis in his book.

Product 280

Product Startup Email Technical Review 280

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. 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. Me : Product definition, use cases, feature list, wireframes, comps, really whatever you have.

Develop 354

Develop Development Technical Review CTO Coach 354

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 1, 2019

The new financing will give Relativity the cash to fully build its “Stargate” factory, a semi-autonomous, full-scale production facility that will house the company’s massive 3-D printers and produce its first rocket, the Terran 1. Relativity Space signs the satellite transportation company Momentus as a new customer.

Chief Technology Officer 168

Chief Technology Officer SpaceX Los Angeles Venture Capital 168

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff. where Tony Wright suggests charging right now. Good stuff from Jason.

Pricing 150

Pricing Acquisition Customer Custom 150

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. Tell me a bit about your background.

Product 150

Product Entrepreneur Social Media Google 150

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

Bitvore has created an intelligence gathering and analysis system--originally developed for secretive intelligence agencies--but is now being used by finance and Wall Street customers to mine data for tracking investments. The company's President, Jeff Curie, was also an executive at Access360, IBM, and SupplyFrame.

Artificial Inteligence 170

Artificial Inteligence Tech Coast Angels Funding IBM 170

SoCal CTO

MARCH 10, 2010

Steve Blank wrote a great post recently entitled Perfection By Subtraction – The Minimum Feature Set where he explains the real goals around defining a minimum viable product: Founders act like the “minimum” part is the goal. Or worse, that every potential customer should want it. Often, it’s the related nature of the features.

Product 150

Product Startup Customer Custom 150

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? 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. What's going to go wrong? See Investors, MVPs and Evidence of Traction.

CTO Coach 219

CTO Coach Metrics Framework Software Development 219

socalTECH

DECEMBER 21, 2020

We successfully pivoted to a flexible workplace in 2020, which includes transitioning our 70-member Customer Care team to work from home in less than a week. The pandemic allowed us to experiment with working from home, which has proven to be quite successful without sacrificing productivity. Harrison earned a B.A.S. READ MORE>>.

Technical Review 113

Technical Review Startup CIO Southern California 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition. An obvious example would be in sales.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

In the early days the CEO is the jack-of-all-trades, doer-of-all, famously the “chief janitor” or coffee maker. But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. And then there’s product management. Most companies that are scaling have CFOs, heads of HR or talent.

Entrepreneur 385

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Sales 385

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I had just left Salesforce.com where I was VP, Products, after they had acquired my second startup. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. Over the past 2.5 Why does that matter?

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 28, 2014

Scherzay was previously the CTO at CrowdGather, and also had founded social media software firm FavRav. Effectively, when an organization uses our product, the can scale any subscription service with ease. Taher Scherzay: I''ve been an engineer since school, and a CTO for quite a number of years. What is Thaeres about?

Startup 159

Startup Oracle Customer Custom 159

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

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. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles CTO Hire CTO Coach Develop 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

Value factors include your related product breadth and depth, relationships with thought leaders, key vendors, and large potential customers. Building the product may be the easy part of your startup challenge. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder. Experience and connections in your business area.

Equity 99

Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Tell me about the business.

Develop 396

Develop Development Startup SEO 396

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 27, 2007

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.

eHarmony 150

eHarmony CTO Coach CTO Hire Southern California 150

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Major Phases / Major Features - What are the major features in the major phases for the product? Tell me about the business.

Develop 384

Develop Development Startup SEO 384

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). ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. So I asked Ethan to build his product first and then we would fund.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

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?

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Guide CTO Coach Southern California 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

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?

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Invest CTO Coach Southern California 150

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 15, 2021

In all, Sean Breuner, AvantStay’s CEO who co-founded the company with Reuben Doetsch (the CTO), said that 750,000 guests stay in its network of properties, with the average number per homes being seven guests. “Customers are starting to meet the demand from an experience perspective in rental homes,” he said.

Platform 139

Platform Invest Los Angeles Funding 139