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. They both would have lots of thoughts and ideas. What type of shares?

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CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 150

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 previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. Tempus Fugit.

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Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

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?

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Venture Capital Guide CTO Coach Southern California 150

SoCal CTO

MAY 18, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups, Startup Development and being a Startup CTO. Here are a couple of the other collections: 16 Great Startup Posts from March , Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April. Thanks Steve!

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

Think about how much more value was created for all these constituencies (and society) by Snap staying independent vs. Instagram selling to Facebook.  —  @jasonlk How the Long Game Has Benefitted Upfront I was thinking about it this morning in particular and thinking about my own personal investment history.

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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. 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.

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Venture Capital Invest CTO Coach Southern California 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

” But I went back to the office and talked with Stuart Lander & David Lapter and said, “no prizes for guessing which job Ethan’s going to take.” When Ethan was considering leaving Google we talked about it. What do we like about OpenTable? It’s more convenient for both sides.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also talks about the rate of growth and the need to pick targets, measure and question assumptions when you aren’t achieving your objectives. I talked about some of that here. He talks about making things that people want & going after a big enough market. “Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money?

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Startup Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

This is part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital. I recently wrote a post on how to Deal with your Elephants in the Room during your VC meetings. Elephants being big issues that the VC will be thinking whether you bring it to his/her attention or not. Skeletons in the Closet are these types of issues.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Examples 311

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. The first offerings will be launching in the beginning of 2019, but the company has dozens of customers already using its pilot, McCorkle said.

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TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 1, 2019

about his Starship , designed to carry heavy payloads to the Moon and Mars; and NASA began doling out cash to companies that would provide transportation, infrastructure, and support for future lunar missions. Relativity Space chief technology officer Jordan Noone next to one of the company’s 3-D printers.

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Chief Technology Officer SpaceX Los Angeles Venture Capital 168

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. I just want to figure out what a fair valuation is.&# I figured all the VC’s talked so we should. But this example above is all entrepreneur math, not the VC’s.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

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TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

. “We slow down our country, our economy and our ability to innovate when the government becomes excessively aggressive in efforts to break up technology companies, because they see them through a prior-decades lens, when they are operating in a future decade reality. This too shall pass.”

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Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

socalTECH

JUNE 25, 2014

Vessel , a new startup founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and CTO Richard Tom, has raised a round of funding from Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, and Bezos Expeditions. Vessel is in stealth mode, and has not said anything about what it is developing. vessel venture capital hulu jason kilar richard content hollywood'

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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). It's all about leverage. I'm a bit of an anti-VC, as you know. It's about eliminating people.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups and being a Startup CTO : Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March here are the top posts from May 2010. We'll be your hosts for a three-part series about the use of MongoDB here at Etsy. Tesla is not.

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Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

SoCal CTO

MAY 17, 2011

I told them that I had recently seen several posts/articles talking about how vibrant the community has become. Venture Capital As long as I'm pulling this together, here are some venture capital firms in Los Angeles that can help get you wired in. As is usual, I couldn't remember where I had seen those posts.

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Los Angeles Southern California Startup Angel 196

SoCal CTO

MAY 17, 2011

I told them that I had recently seen several posts/articles talking about how vibrant the community has become. Venture Capital As long as I'm pulling this together, here are some venture capital firms in Los Angeles that can help get you wired in. As is usual, I couldn't remember where I had seen those posts.

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Los Angeles Southern California Startup Angel 188

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Equity Formulas While it's somewhat an art, there has been a lot written about how you can look at equity compensation. I've talked about this topic before in How Investors Think About Valuation of Pre-Revenue Startups. How To Calculate Sweat Equity Startup Equity For Employees A VC: Employee Equity: How Much?

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Equity CTO Hire Startup Examples 391

SoCal CTO

JUNE 13, 2011

We had an interesting presentation at the LA CTO Forum by the CTO of a startup who chose Groovy / Grails as the framework for their startup. t prompted a good discussion around how CTOs go about choosing the programming language and framework for their startup. Get get help (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ).

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Framework Startup Java PHP 330

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 7, 2007

I've been reading or hearing quite a bit about how startups these days don't take nearly as much capital to create as they used to. If that's actually true, then it creates New Rules Of Technology VC. Angel networks act like low-end VCs and expect a company with a product and a somewhat proven market opportunity.

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Venture Capital Startup Incubator Examples 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. You’re also learning directly about the skills of your sales staff by observing them in action.

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Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

People like Vinod Khosla, Keith Rabois, Brian Singerman, Marc Andreessen and others have all made head-scratching private comments to me that sounded so foreign to what I thought other people were doing in VC that they caused me to challenge and ultimately change some of my own views. Each is a framework for thinking about a problem.

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Startup Framework CTO Coach Sales 407

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

” Strangely, the best I’ve ever heard this exemplified is in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential - which is really a book about startups as told through kitchen stories. How about asking, “If we hired Susan could you imagine considering coming with her?” In many ways that can be way more telling.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

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. This is a very common scenario when entrepreneurs pitch VCs and frankly is a very common scenario when VCs try to raise money from LPs.

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Software Review Startup Email Conference 381

socalTECH

MAY 25, 2011

Los Angeles-based Altly , the latest startup of Dmitry Shapiro , the founder of Veoh and former CTo of MySpace Music, has officially thrown down the gauntlet, saying in a blog post this week that it there is a need for an alternative to Facebook--and the firm is going to create that alternative. READ MORE>>.

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Veoh Funding Venture Capital Blogging 160

Tech.Co

JULY 12, 2016

Brogan Bambrogan, the colorful cofounder of futuristic travel startup Hyperloop, left his position as CTO at the company less than two weeks ago. Shervin Pishevar’s venture capital firm, Sherpa Capital, is a repeat investor in Hyperloop One.” Today, he’s suing a former colleague for harassment.

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CTO Hire Buzzfeed Venture Capital News 70

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Explicit markup for audio and video places elevates moving pictures to a similar native rendering capacity as markup we are used to but with more fine-grained details about underlying formats and compression available before loading. This post looks at the implementation details of HTML 5 video. " The emotions around sunk costs run deep.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2023

The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder. Of course, all cofounders need to remember that allocated percentages will be diluted as angel and VC investors are brought in. Now comes the reality check.

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Equity Patents CTO Hire Startup 99

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Kevin Federline Search Engine Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. talking about Prodeges Search with Kevin Site - [link]. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. I actually think this is a pretty innovative model.

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CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

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. That was three months ago this week.

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Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

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. 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. A caller dialed in to ask us questions about his startup.

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Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2020

The value in a startup is all about tangible results, so I see no equity value in the idea alone. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder. Of course, all co-founders need to remember that allocated percentages will be diluted as angel and VC investors are brought in. Now comes the reality check.

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Startup Equity Patents CTO Hire 174

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics. What The Heck Does “Traction” Really Mean To A VC?

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Metrics Venture Capital News Product 264

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value 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. Can you please call Stacy to ask about our BD deal?

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Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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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