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At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. After all, that’s what tech innovation is all about. Background Questions Let’s start with some background questions about the business and product. Who are the customers?
Most innovators don’t have a technical background, so it’s hard to evaluate the truth of the situation. And unless they have a tech background, they can’t look under the hood themselves. The answer is to engage a trusted outside source for a TechnicalReview – a deep-dive assessment that provides a C-suite perspective.
I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. But what was interesting to me was that I found myself recommending that each of them should have a technical adviser. Third party products are used appropriately. Review the code being built.
Why do this without the right technical advisor? Just like attorneys, technical advisors can help navigate waters that many find murky. Actually, many startups need two kinds of technical advisors. Would you create contracts without an attorney? And Maybe You Need Two!
I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. Investors my tell you that, but what they can look at your product on paper and tell what it does and they will understand if it can be built. And the back-end is something that a non-technical founder can manage.
Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology startup DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different.
Please help me congratulate him by Re/Tweeting this post (and following him if you don’t already). Industry reviews. Helping be the VC “presence” at key events. Associates often shadow partners at board meetings so that they can help follow up with the company on important initiatives between board meetings.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Before that, I was running product at Spotrunner. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. Talk about the technology behind your operations here?
However, Redondo Beach-based StaffRanker (www.staffranker.com) has rolled out a system to help those companies better manage what is a notoriously difficult segment of the labor market, which has a lot of turnover and which just doesn''t match existing, corporate performance management systems. It turns out, it''s not so easy.
The OC Tech Alliance , one of Orange County''s industry groups which helps to promote the local technology industry, says today is the last day to submit a company or CEO for its annual awards event, the High-Tech Innovation Awards. award event alliance technology county orange octechalliance' READ MORE>>.
One of the largest concentrations of technical talent in Los Angeles is in Glendale, at YP (www.yp.com) -- staffed with a surprising number of Los Angeles startup vets. Before that, I was running product at Spotrunner. Our whole product and technology team is about 500 people. How big is YP.com? Louis and Atlanta.
Saving cost won’t help you if you can’t make the daily innovations required to stay competitive. Leading edge technology software and manufacturing require constant course corrections and iterative restarts. It’s hard to write a detailed specification on an evolving new service, process, or product that embodies your core competency.
We will have to build (or buy) technology in this area.” The thing is … what I see many sales execs do is burn up countless hours on mid-level campaigns that get torpedoed when the go up the organization due to lack of budget, a desire to own that core IP or other more pressing organization priorities.
” Bill Gross, who is one of the Godfathers of the Internet, once told me, “ If you don’t design a product that is 10x better than the competition then you’ll never build anything truly big or amazing.” ” That’s what we’ve set out to build at MakeSpace. 10x the experience.
For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” He or she has worked at some very successful big technology or media companies and went to a great school.
I could have listened to her for hours as many of her lessons were ones I hadn’t heard before such as how she used online gaming when she was younger as a way of both teaching herself tech as well as learning to lead remote teams. Nanea Reeves has a storied career in senior leadership roles at technology companies.
Many times they also pick up product and tech, too. Often times you find the CEO who really just likes to do product or tech. Similarly I talk to CEOs who can’t do a sales pipeline review with me. If you run product then it’s easy – VP Product. But I ran product management.
The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. uBeam’s tech does work and I have safely seen it demo’d in the real life many times. Working on it. And being ambitious.
The part of the movement that resonates the most with me (in my words) is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do. Testing is what helps determine whether you’re really on to something.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
Michael Chasin: LawKick.com is essentially a marketplace that makes it easier than ever to find legal help. How the website works, is the client goes to the website, and indicates what they need help with. That''s how we ended up developing this technology, to take that initial step out of the process. What''s LawKick about?
Companies that have leveraged technology to make the procurement and delivery of food more accessible to more people have been seeing a big surge of business this year, as millions of consumers are encouraged (or outright mandated, due to Covid-19) to socially distance or want to avoid the crowds of physical shopping and eating excursions.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Generally I can provide quite a bit of help in that brief time. And I try my best to point them to resources that can help them longer term.
There’s an article making the rounds in tech circles titled “ Growth Hacking is Bull ” written by Muhammad Saleem. His early experience was at LogMeIn and then he went on to help Xobni, DropBox, LookOut and EventBrite to name a few companies I’m sure you’ve heard of.
One startup that aims to help make the process simpler, cheaper and less stressful by helping people manage the home renovation process has raised $6 million to help it grow even faster. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar trillion-dollar industry.
The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology.
Taking on a business partner can be an excellent strategic decision in helping move the business forward. Addition of new services or product lines. Access to new technologies. Perform preliminary duediligence: Review the business plan including marketing, sales strategies and financial needs.
Today we’re proud to talk more about Grove Labs – we really hope you’ll quickly check out this innovative product and we think many of you will be as impressed with Grove as we have been. If they’re successful in the long run they will also help reduce water consumption and will help create healthier lifestyles.
You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. Similarly I liked to keep myself apprised of the technical decisions we were making. Dipping: As a decision maker you rely on information being passed to you by the people who report to you.
The entrepreneur cannot wait to show me their product via a demo. You’re the first one I’ve met who didn’t want to see our product.” I then explain that I evaluate the veracity of a product by seeking guidance from current, past and prospective users, rather than relying on a product demonstration. Don’t Demo Me Bro.
It’s a great one about entrepreneurship, friendship and the collaborative economy that is helping families in need across the world. They can read reviews, see pictures and even talk to the family before confirming. I then clicked on reviews, looked at pictures and read the owners descriptions of what they were looking for.
While I have some sympathy with not investing too heavily in sales people until the product has properly been tested and commercialized in the enterprise environment, in the end it’s a fact that it takes sales people to move product through large organizations. Let me explain why: 1. Successful Implementations.
Many of you have read or at least know the primary thesis of “ Crossing the Chasm &# the seminal book on marketing your products to mainstream consumers by Geoffrey Moore. It influenced a generation of tech marketers. We like to use new product and gain benefits before our peers. We are evangelists.
Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. The “span of control” for a growing tech startup is probably 6-9 people. You help them prioritize their objectives and review the results. You set direction.
The team’s technical skills are solid, but they’re undermined by poor communication, especially around requirements and expectations. This is where a technicalreview can be useful!) Don’t worry - we can help. Knowing how to spot these signs can help you keep your business on track. It’s a good question.
The entire dinner was a discussion of what it would take for our software to help this customer be successful, what he liked about it and where we needed to improve. If you don’t have empathy for their journey who can you help your customers to succeed? You need to embrace that there are good actors out there and bad actors.
help you integrate your product with other systems making it harder for your product to be replaced by competitors. deliver profitable revenue that while on gross margins of 50% vs. software at 85-95% it is still profits to help you cover fixed costs. Only Work on Projects That Support Your Core Product Effort.
So how did a company that provides storage grow so fast (we’ll exit 2017 with 10’s of millions in recurring revenue), why is it so defensible and is it really a tech startup? If you buy that Amazon is a tech startup then essentially you’ve already answered the question. In short — how the hell did we raise $30 million?
The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Maybe it helps that I love controversy and pushing the boundaries so people felt it was OK for them to do it as well. There’s a guy in Los Angeles that I met at several tech networking events. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. he asked.
More people are focused on the beginning of the product lifecycle; very few are focused at the end.”. The end of the product lifecycle is where Murthy and Kaplan feel Ghost has “an enormous opportunity to help people be more efficient in that process,” Murthy added. Last week, Syrup Tech raised $6.3 Syrup Tech bags $6.3M
Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He’s thoughtful about markets, investors, products and is always very well reasoned in his arguments.
We’ve heard this from startup founders, product managers, development team leads, CTOs, and others who see their product gaining traction, but simultaneously see performance falling off a cliff. User experience is suffering and it’s the worst possible time with the product taking off. So, why does this happen?
This is probably because many founders are product or technology people. The mistake many startup people make is they hire a “sales person&# to go out and talk with customers so they can do what they’re good at which is building product or “running the company.&# Sales people are a different breed, you say.
These two questions/answers can help define the early proof points for your company. Proving your Business Model Works - Build, Define, and Review But how do you prove your numbers? Start by building just enough of your product to get early CAC and CLV signals (they won’t be perfect). Apply costs to each channel.
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