The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Could $100,000 and the right developer skills make you an overnight billionaire? How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? Here are their breakdowns of the costs and time investments to create 10 of the world’s hottest startups. But a good developer could make it quicker.”. 1) Twitter.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

Product development. Queuing theory and product development. The Essential Product Investigation Phase Gate. So you want to ship the product early? What does a CTO do? What does a CTO do? What does a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) do in a high-tech company? So what is the CTO job?

CTO 40

CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Architecture 40

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

Jud is an extremely experienced CTO / technical product manager and developer, but had never been a CEO. Oh, and they are hiring as fast as they can find great people ; across the spectrum (business, sales, & engineering). At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO.

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Hiring the right people at the right time is key.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

firstround.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Product and Engineering. How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO. Today, he’s the co-founder and CTO of Artillery , bringing console-quality gaming to the web browser. at least until one of our new hires requested one.

CTO Hire 52

CTO Hire Engineer Software Review Part-Time VPE 52

SVPG

MARCH 5, 2011

Organizationally, this role typically manages the product owners/product managers and the user experience designers, and generally reports to the CEO. With some exceptions, it it is important that this role be a peer to the CTO and the VP Marketing. Those that do succeed make a dramatic difference for their companies.

Product 82

Product CTO Hire Hiring Leadership 82

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

The last time they were starting a company at the raw, pre-product/market fit stage may have been quite a few years ago. The context of starting business may have changed, and some of the tools and practices (especially around early product development and go-to-market) might look very different.

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. Too often, however, I have found CTO / Founders paired with business people who not only don't add value, but frequently detract from the value of the business.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. Vlad is also the CEO at DarwinApps , a software development shop.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

I have covered a couple of topics in this series, the first being hiring the best people and the second organizing for success based on the attributes of the people you are hiring. engineers paired would jump from frontend to backend erratically at each sprint iteration.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Spencer Fry

DECEMBER 16, 2019

I've chosen to continue to lead product, but I've given up almost all of my responsibilities in regard to marketing and support. In fact for a long time, it was just me running all departments, but as we began to grow, that broke down quickly. New hiring responsibilities. It's even difficult for me at times as the CEO.

CTO Hire 44

CTO Hire Wiki Product Development Matching 44

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast. Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or product development. And convey this in your pitch.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

Up and Running

OCTOBER 8, 2015

Instead, we built a product first (that’s expensive!) and then started hunting around for the right target market (that’s usually the cheap part of product development). Or, your target market might be a certain type of employee at another company, such as a CTO or head of marketing. First, what’s market research?

Marketing 60

Marketing CTO Hire Forecast Finder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Up and Running

MAY 13, 2015

I bill out at somewhere near 200 an hour most of the time. They don’t bill as much as I do, and they do the work in a fraction of time. Doing things all yourself as a business owner is an absolute time drain that we all need to take a magnifying glass to and figure out how not to succumb to this one.

Management 60

Management Product Video Fractional CTO 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

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. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Joel said it: "Top notch development teams dont torture their programmers."

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. The goal of iterative development is to give us guard rails so we dont veer off to either extreme. Now that is fun.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&# “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&#

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. The hardest part of entrepreneurship is to develop the judgment to know when its time to change direction and when its time to stay the course. IMVU had a roughly two-month-long development cycle.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. For one, it required us to keep our developer sandbox setup procedure simple and automated. May 11, 2009 9:42 PM Artem said.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. There is much work that I need to do (the only developer so far) before we have something customers can use. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This simple feedback loop has proven its worth to me time and again. Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Like gmlk, I usually subscribe the first time I find something useful. I originally thought I might get some development process tips (I manage developers), but I find that Im really enjoying your business tips (SEM, listening to customers, etc.). Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. No phone system.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. Most of my time in the store is spent scrolling through endless lists. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. And what distinguishes a good app?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74