SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

I've recently received several emails from people looking for a technical cofounder for their startup. I promised I would write this post with some thoughts and ideas on the topic. Make sure you go through the 32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder. Here's an example of that kind of email.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire CTO Coach Startup Equity 211

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

It has historically been the case that VCs would rather fund the promise of 100x in a company with almost no revenue than the reality of a company growing at 50% but doing $20+ million in sales. The Valley has obsessed with a quick up-and-to-right momentum story because we were thought to live in “winner take most” markets.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Capital Funding Startup 363

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

You race back to the office to tell everybody how well it went and you wait for the follow-up call to have a partners’ meeting or talk about term sheets or at least dip into due diligence. At night I had a group dinner where I met 6 new entrepreneurs and hung out with some old friends from law firms, banks and other VC funds.

Software Review 381

Software Review Startup Email Conference 381

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. The first check I wrote was just over 10 years ago into a company called Invoca who just announced a new $56 million in funding led by Scott Hilleboe at HIG Growth Partners. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?—?$15

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. A great business often starts with one person, but it doesn’t end there.

Funding 112

Funding Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire 112

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Startups are hard. You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. We tell startup stories. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup. You’ve heard that a million times. Those that we survive with become family.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

There is a battle between entrepreneurs who try to change the world and solve a meaningful problem and those who write take-down pieces with no apparent personal benefit other than attention. Even bigger is the desire to stick one’s middle finger up at all of the people who doubted you all along. ” **.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

One of the hardest things to know when you’re new to fund raising is what you’re supposed to send to an investor, when and will they keep your information confidential. This is part of a series on how to improve your fund raising game. As a VC and former entrepreneur let me offer you some advice. I recommend sub 10MB.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital Slides Email Startup 261

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2012

One of the first tough decisions that startup founders have to make is how to allocate or split the equity among co-founders. The easy answer of splitting it equally among all co-founders, since there is minimal value at that point, is usually the worst possible answer, and often results in a later startup failure due to an obvious inequity.

Startup 101

Startup Entrepreneur Equity CTO Hire 101

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. A great business often starts with one person, but it doesn’t end there.

Startup 104

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 104

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. A caller dialed in to ask us questions about his startup. I was recently on TWiST with Jason Calacanis. Why should I be?

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. My blog was wiped out.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

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? Ive personally been involved in the start-up world in Los Angeles for about 15 years, and have had the opportunity to work on many early-stage companies (e.g.,

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

One of the first tough decisions that startup founders have to make is how to allocate or split the equity among co-founders. The easy answer of splitting it equally among all co-founders, since there is minimal value at that point, is usually the worst possible answer, and often results in a later startup failure due to an obvious inequity.

Equity 91

Equity Startup CTO Hire CTO Coach 91

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

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. I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. A great business often starts with one person, but it doesn’t end there.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

Because of this, I've always tried to stay up-to-speed on how early-stage investors look at valuation of companies. I should try to come back and write about this more, but the point of this post is that it's important not to only think about this aspect. He just post: Establishing the Pre-money Valuation of Pre-revenue Startups.

Startup 198

Startup Custom Development Sales Writing 198

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Many people will write the history on why Ring became an enormously successful company and why it became a real-world unicorn in a world when many startups are anointed that merely on paper. We funded the seed round, the A round, the B round, C round, D round and E round. we were sold on the concept immediately.

Startup 247

Startup Pricing Product Marketing 247

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). Tell us a bit of the story on how you started HashtagOne? What's the theme of your investments?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

socalTECH

JULY 22, 2016

Rufus Labs is one of a number of hardware startups which have started to proliferate in the community, due to low cost hardware, 3D printing, and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Where they start to fail, is one, they are handheld. Because of that, wearables have a good leg up.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Startup Software Review CTO Hire 100

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

I recently got together with Aaron Shechet and an early stage startup to discuss the direction the company might want to take. I grew up in Los Angeles and went to undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 2003 with Honors in Economics. While at UC Santa Barbara, I started a café which served over 1100 dorm residents.

Startup 150

Startup SEO Pepperdine Blogging 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

We started this week’s show with a Q&A session where I answered viewer questions about fund raising and the VC industry. Heck, stick around and watch me discuss the seed funding debate that is going on right now and what is happening in the VC industry overall. Great exit. - Finally we covered this weeks deals.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I’m inspired by the enthusiasm of the young, emerging startup ecosystem that is here. As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0 awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory&# for Seattle or for any regional market, really.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

socalTECH

APRIL 29, 2014

We caught up with one of the local teams competing in that competition, VOXearch (www.voxearch.com), to learn more about the prize as well as their specific approach to the competition. Mike Outmesguine: We''re one of about thirty teams left in the challenge, out of more than 300 that signed up last August.

Startup 262

Startup Competition Software Review UCLA 262

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. Industry standard post your first round of funding will be 15-20%.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

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. And as Rob points out – if you email members with short updates more frequently they are more up to speed when you do need them to weigh in.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

I grew up believing that human behavior was 20% nature, 80% nurture. I wasn’t going to write about it since he had just covered the topic and echoed my point of view. of all data is made up. OK, not literally made up. I’m now a VC that funds entrepreneurs. Nature vs. Nurture.

Startup 289

Startup Statistics Entrepreneur Study 289

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

However, in a very unusual move, the City of Los Angeles has tapped a true technology veteran and insider, well known to those here in the industry-- Peter Marx , most recently at Qualcomm--to head up the city''s efforts to both adopt technology and improve the city''s relationship with its growing technology companies.

Los Angeles 203

Los Angeles Technology Startup Examples 203

socalTECH

JULY 23, 2012

As a hiring manager, and as the former CTO of Buy.com, Navid Nobakht , Co-Founder of Recmnd.Me ([link] had a problem--how to really figure out if someone he was hiring could actually execute. All the costs, from hosting to storage to scaling up an scaling down are all gone. Describe what Recmnd.me is all about?

CTO Hire 147

CTO Hire Startup Sites Technical Review 147

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Steve Jillings has a long track record of running successful startups in Southern California, ranging from such companies as FrontBridge Technologies (sold to Microsoft in 2005 for over $200M) and Vantage Media (acquired in 2007). To learn more, we caught up with Steve. Every other hand goes down, and ours stays up.

Marina Del Rey 238

Marina Del Rey Startup IP Examples 238

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 caught up with James Segil , the firm's President, to hear the story behind that big growth at the company. We've grown really fast.

CTO Hire 248

CTO Hire Content Networking Web 248

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

TechZulu caught up with co-founder Calvin Schemanski chat about their upcoming launch, their product and why Long reviews suck. On myfab5, people rank their favorite places instead of giving them star ratings and write bite-sized reviews instead of writing long reviews. What is myfab5?

Software Review 79

Software Review Technical Review Writing Startup 79

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

TechZulu caught up with Michael Piermont, amSTATZ Chief Executive Officer and this is what he revealed. Sergey Belyankin is our Chief Technology Officer. Sergey’s diverse experience as an entrepreneur, technology consultant and software executive qualifies him to lead amSTATZ’s technology development.

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Every investor expects to see some traction, both before and after a funding event. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan.

Tips 88

Tips Startup CTO Hire Press 88

socalTECH

JUNE 18, 2009

Our interview today is with Santa Monica-based OneCubicle (www.onecubicle.com), a new startup we ran across recently, which is looking to provide a more professional social networking site for younger people. Why did you decide to start yet another social networking site? It's not in my make up.

Social Network 100

Social Network Entertainment Startup CTO Coach 100

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Last week, Santa Monica-based Revolution Prep announced its first, institutional round of funding, worth $15M, from Kennet Partners. How did Revolution Prep start? We started in 2000. It was us, funding ourselves from credit cards, literally, to a company that is now on par with Kaplan and Princeton Review.

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’s what we’ve started to tackle and the mission RightScale is on. 9) The story of how you started RightScale is classic.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188