SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 10, 2012

I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. CTO Founder - Do they really still need a technical advisor?

Technical Review 332

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review 332

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Founders fit the definition of a creator: they see something no one else does. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

Before the rapid rise of Unicorns, (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” of the founders after they found product/market fit. The founders. Founders are comfortable in the chaos and disorder. And they were right. Wakeup Call.

Part-Time VPE 329

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 329

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

What's Going to Go Wrong A lot of founders don't really understand Lean Startup principles. Don't be fooled by a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development. They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build.

Technical Cofounder 219

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Developers Software Development 219

TechEmpower

AUGUST 14, 2023

Startup founders make decisions on a daily basis – significant decisions that will have lasting impact on their business. CTO Founder – Do they really still need a technical advisor? No good innovator turns down advice! Why do this without the right technical advisor? Would you create contracts without an attorney?

Technical Review 260

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review 260

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2022

For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company. Investors, partners, team members, and customers implicitly value or devalue a startup based on the leader’s physical presence, emotional identity, social skills, intellectual agility, moral values, and past performance in the domain.

Technical Review 323

Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation Leadership 323

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

The past year was a wild ride for startups and founders, giving a whole new meaning to the ”rollercoaster” aspect of being an entrepreneur. Patrick Collison , self-made billionaire founder of Stripe. Use agility to your advantage and make speed a team priority. Bill Gates , founder of Microsoft. Team, product, market.

Founder 187

Founder Startup Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 187

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company. Investors, partners, team members, and customers implicitly value or devalue a startup based on the leader’s physical presence, emotional identity, social skills, intellectual agility, moral values, and past performance in the domain.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome, our guest is Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement. 42:20 Did agile development influence you? Oh, and if you didn’t guess, the title, “if you don’t have a discrete hypothesis you are incapable of failing” is, of course, an Eric Ries quote. There are many in this episode.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. Challenges I started by asking the founders in the room to tell me some of the challenges they have working with developers. Developers (and Founders) are challenged to know how much is okay in terms of bugs.

Technical Cofounder 280

Technical Cofounder Developer Fractional CTO CTO Hire 280

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis , it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to update the business model.

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

Until we start giving grades for resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity and having a passion for products and customers, great grades and successful entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.). Lessons Learned.

Technical Review 335

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Agile Development is the way startups quickly iterate their product as they learn. Agile Development is the way startups quickly iterate their product as they learn.

Customer Development 274

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 274

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts. The Agile Board.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2022

A particularly critical moment is when the founders hand over the leadership to a more managerial regime. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. It’s a volatile period for every company, where most struggle with getting commercial and technological traction, usually based on a single product or service.

Dilution 355

Dilution Startup Merger Flash 355

YoungUpstarts

MAY 29, 2017

Agile Methodology.”. Is agile & secure development a mismatch? 2 At first glance, agile development and security seem to be opposed to each other, with agile being focused on functionality driven, speed and flexibility in short cycles with limited documentation. The Lean Startup.”. Fail Fast, Pivot.”. SecAppDev 2014).

Security 206

Security Software Review Technical Review Agile 206

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2014

by Sam Bahreini, co-founder and COO of VoloForce. Sam Bahreini, a seasoned operations officer and agile entrepreneur, is co-founder and COO of VoloForce , a company that helps enterprise retail brands understand organization implementation through automation and simplification.

Customer 231

Customer Development Team Review Cofounder Agile 231

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model. For the first time we’d have a competition that closely resembled the reality that founders face, rather than a creative writing exercise. And extra credit for multiple times through the loop.

Business Plan 320

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 320

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. It turns out the term “visionary founder” was usually a synonym for someone who was hallucinating. Founders Need to Run the Company Longer. So, almost like clockwork 20 th century startups fired the innovators/founders when they scaled.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make.

Technology 334

Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

In fact the people a large firm needs for this kind of innovation looks suspiciously like startup founders and the processes needed look like Customer Development. Customer and Agile Development (and the Lean Startup ) may be the emerging methodologies large companies need to build innovative new products. different processes.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. The Lean LaunchPad Class. You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2022

I’m sorry to predict it will never happen, so the agility you may have learned over the past couple of years will continue to be critical to your survival. In this context, the late great Andy Grove , founder of Intel, believed that no change breeds failure. New blood and new ideas are keys to agility.

Agile 371

Agile Metrics Demand Internet 371

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

. + 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Vinod Khosla Founder Dave McClure Founding Partner Eric Ries Author Steve Blank Serial Entrepreneur & Professor Todd Park CTO Travis Kalanick CEO & Co-Founder Joe Zadeh Director of Product Sam Shank Co-Founder & CEO NEW!

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

Decentralised Exchange (DEX) Platform : Build a DEX that can compete with centralised exchanges by leveraging the efficiency of small, agile teams. Startup Founders with Systems Programming Expertise: YC is looking for founders with deep expertise in low-level systems that can be applied to various startup ideas.

Software Review 78

Software Review Technical Review Startup Software Engineering 78

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 7, 2013

The picture to the left is of Ryan Martens, Rally’s founder and CTO, giving Josie Health, the CEO of The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County , a check for $676,000. Part of that vision became the agile software development products that Rally makes. But Ryan’s vision was always bigger than that.

Community 182

Community Colorado Common Stock Equity 182

The Startup Magazine

MAY 3, 2024

Schedule Ample Downtime Startup founders are notorious for their workaholic tendencies, often to the detriment of their mental and physical health. Just as successful startups are agile in their operations, so must you be agile in your approach to work-life balance. Be willing to pivot and adopt new techniques as necessary.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Startup Agile Software Review 166

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 29, 2020

This start-up is headed by industry-leading professionals including its CEO and co-founder, Ido Susan, and Hillel Kobrinsky the CSO and co-founder. The company is headed up by co-founders Chemi Katz and Ohad Greenshpan, and has several big-name investors involved, including Greatpoint, Hanaco, Oak HC/FT, and Blumberg Capital.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Software Review Israel Technical Cofounder 147

SoCal CTO

APRIL 9, 2013

Do not fall into the trap of Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development. They didn''t ask you some of the questions in: 32 Questions Developers Should Ask a Startup Founder. Are they asking good questions? You should be getting an estimate for the work effort before you get started. They will give you a quote.

Web Development 204

Web Development Web Developer Los Angeles 204

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I was agile enough to keep up with innumerable changes and I was changing lots of things myself. Some (like your peers or even the founders) don’t understand it, and others (the VCs) realize it’s not in their interest to let you know. Declare them cultural co-founders. Heck every day something new was happening at our startup.

Part-Time VPE 334

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 334

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote worker hired to complete tasks you should not be doing as the founder of a startup. Agile Development, meet Agile Business. Any ongoing work that can be described in a written process can be outsourced to a VA and save incredible amounts of time for the founders.

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Dr. Kersten, Founder and CEO of Tasktop , an award-winning company changing the way companies deliver software, introduces the Flow Framework – a new way of building an innovative technology infrastructure that will change the way enterprises do business – and provides a toolkit for delivering software at the pace of a startup.

Framework 79

Framework Agile Open Source Software 79

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2019

A particularly critical moment is when the founders hand over the leadership to a more managerial regime. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. It’s a volatile period for every company, where most struggle with getting commercial and technological traction, usually based on a single product or service.

Dilution 224

Dilution Merger Flash Global 224

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 2, 2020

As a result, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, marketers, and anyone in between can take advantage. The point of no-code tools is to empower non-engineers to create. They make it so that building, organizing, and automating can be done without ever learning to code.

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire eCommerce Engineer Software 264

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 8, 2023

According to Gergo Vari, the founder of Lensa, if your startup is ready to ride the metaverse wave, staying informed and investing in the skills and expertise needed for this new era are crucial. Adapting to emerging trends and staying agile will be crucial for startups as the metaverse grows.

Technical Review 133

Technical Review Generative AI Startup Agile 133

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 20, 2023

With such daunting statistics, it’s clear that maintaining a startup becomes an uphill battle for founders without the right foundations. The Founder’s Journey To truly succeed, a founder needs resilience , a consistent capacity to innovate, and the agility to adapt to an ever-changing market.

Technical Review 137

Technical Review Startup Silicon Valley Agile 137