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Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

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Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?” You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be. The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams.

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Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. We’re building a supercomputer.”

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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. Instead, they find options and can communicate them to everyone in the company. Find the 80/20 - this was my favorite part of the job. March 23, 2010 2:05 PM Anonymoussaid. I mean, have you seen other people? They might do anything !

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Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

The VP of Engineering says, “well we don’t have the resources or time, and as long as you know we could build better computers then you guys, why don’t you tell us the details about your computers.” Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Help them?!!

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Hiring Executives: If You’ve Never Done the Job, How Do You Hire Somebody Good?

Ben's Blog

The biggest difference between being a great functional manager and being a great general manager—and particularly a great CEO—is that as a general manager, you must hire and manage people who are far more competent at their jobs than you would be at their jobs. So, with no experience, how do you hire someone good? Probably none.

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Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Just change it.