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. Find a lawyer and someone who does CTO searches for VC backed companies in your area. They both would have lots of thoughts and ideas. What type of shares?

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 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. But I knew that to be a good decision maker I needed first hand knowledge rather than just a summary from my CTO.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. I need to take some VC meetings. But it did take Brad as a public spokesman, consummate networker and successful VC to help create legitimacy to let David’s ideas flourish. Not to mention they have the highest profile VC / blogger Fred Wilson of AVC.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them. Why You Should Write. It's human nature," he writes.

Startup 191

Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. Writing a book will be fun. Stuart is well worth following on Twitter & now that’s he’s a VC he is likely to share his wisdom more freely. You hire people who look good on paper. You REALLY know.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

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).

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

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. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

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." What The Heck Does “Traction” Really Mean To A VC? Great analysis from John Greathouse: Do You Speak VC?

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Metrics Venture Capital News Product 264

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Thursday, March 22, 2007 Discussion Creation Among Bloggers - LinkedIn, Blogging and Discussion Groups Ive been participating in a Yahoo Group that are users of LinkedIn and who are Bloggers: [link] Its an interesting group of folks from diverse backgrounds. And, I dont like to copy and paste.

Blogging 150

Blogging CTO Coach CTO Hire Southern California 150

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

” Balaji Sirinivasan, the chief technology officer of Coinbase, took to Twitter to offer his thoughts on the Warren plan. “If big companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are prevented from acquiring startups, that actually reduces competition,” Sirinivasan writes. This too shall pass.”

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

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. is a requirement. Think about how you can prove your business model with an MVP. Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation.

Startup 198

Startup Custom Development Sales Writing 198

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). I'm a bit of an anti-VC, as you know. As a result, I really saw Visalus as a technology company.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 4, 2009

This hot list is based on various social signals of what people are writing about, reading, bookmarking, searching, etc. Last month we Launched Los Angeles Tech and in the announcement we provide the Hot List for the first half of January 2009. You can go to the Hot List post to see what was hot then.

Layoffs 159

Layoffs Woodland Hills Southern California Orange County 159

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

I wasn’t going to write about it since he had just covered the topic and echoed my point of view. Notes Wadhwa, “Jason [Calacanis], Fred [Wilson], and Silicon Valley VC’s, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. I’m now a VC that funds entrepreneurs. Fred Wilson said as much on his blog also.

Startup 289

Startup Statistics Entrepreneur Study 289

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Peter Marx: I started in the technology industry by writing software for imaging microscopes--looking at things like cell populations using early CCD cameras and understanding cell morphology; working on video compression; working on networking stuff and software for early digital telephony like ISDN and on forward.

Los Angeles 203

Los Angeles Technology Startup Examples 203

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2011

They write and tweet every day, with the single guiding credibility and personality that the new social culture demands. Here are a few that I aspire to: Venture Hacks , by Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant. Mark is a serial entrepreneur who is now active in the venture capital community for early-stage startups.

Entrepreneur 92

Entrepreneur Technical Review Blogging Java 92

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. I taught a somewhat crazy course about writing and deploying a scalable website in Ruby on Rails and deploying it in EC2.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 28, 2013

Dave’s industry experience includes tenures as CTO and CEO of several successful software companies, and upper-level management positions in Fortune 100 companies. He keynotes leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, enterprise application integration, and enterprise architecture. CTO at SOA Software.

SaaS 92

SaaS Cloud Computing CIO Web 92

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 would have gladly followed Jamie (and Josh Roth, the CTO who is phenomenal and we’ve also known for a decade) right through an IPO if we could have.

Startup 247

Startup Pricing Product Marketing 247

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

You are writing about the essentials of business. I am planning right not to write a post about how startups often get SEO wrong. A few years ago “venture capital” was a revenue model. We also represent a few larger companies with international issues. Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ? That's great.

Startup 150

Startup SEO Pepperdine Blogging 150

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

9) In Getting The Band Back Together , I write about the power of serial Founding teams. At CallWave, Colin was CTO, Jason was CFO and I was in charge of product marketing and customer acquisition. When we raised our Series A, we put a lot of effort into meeting with VC’s to find the right fit for us.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Now, despite bootstrapping, you actually have some connections to the venture capital world, don't you? Ramit Varma: I've been sort of in and out of the venture space since we started. My brother is actually at Anthem Ventures, working with Bill Woodward, and I was an intern there in business school.

Software Review 178

Software Review Technical Review Education Startup 178

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

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. Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. And covered we did.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Frank Addante

JANUARY 23, 2007

► 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: the Rubicon Project (Internet Advertising Technology) Status: Pre-Launch Visit the Rubicon Project Website Startup 5.0: Zondigo, Inc.

Outsource Development 40

Outsource Development Develop Development Product 40

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. .

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40

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. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. But I don’t think so. call to arms.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

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. We had to write a CRM to keep track of them all. m the f%*kin’ boss.”. clearly didn’t cause this.” How it happens. Final Thought.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

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. Frankly, it’s the life of ANY executives with whom you want to sell product, do a business development deal with, execute M&A, a journalist you want to write about your company?—?anybody.

Software Review 381

Software Review Startup Email Conference 381

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

I’ll write that post one day – it is a very interesting story. 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!)? He took this as a challenge and had a CTO in one week. ON SUCCESS. How do we measure success?

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

As of writing, my twin and I serve as the Co-CEOs and Co-Presidents at LAGbook. Other people on the LAGbook Team include Josh Osemwegie (our Chief Financial Officer), Nosa Ilegbinehi (our Chief Publicity Officer), and Emmanuel Alugo (our Chief Technology Officer). We’re a team of 5.

Social Network 100

Social Network Networking Advertising Startup 100

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

There are hundreds of entrepreneurs here in Los Angeles who are building awesome companies, writing awesome books, making awesome movies and are trying to solve important problems to help make this world a better place. Matt Miller – Co-Founder and CTO of CareerBliss.com. Here are 62 63 Los Angeles entrepreneurs we can be proud of.

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Some great content around the intersection of startups and being a Startup CTO in June this year. This continues my series of posts: Top 30 Startup Posts in June 2010 Top 29 Startup Posts May 2010 Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March The following are the top items based on social signals. Here’s why.

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Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217