Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar. A CEO who has “been there and done that” is traction, especially if teamed with a financial lead (CIO) and a product lead (CTO). Get a real customer and real revenue. Only real results count.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

In two cases, these businesses were doing significant early revenue ($500K/month+), so could be considered “post-seed”, although both of these companies had not raised significant institutional capital before we led their rounds. Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds.

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North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

While some investors will be willing to help you build your team, they will not be willing to invest in your startup if you are not willing to distribute responsibility and bring on diversified expertise. Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Hiring the right people at the right time is key.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. 8220; His three things (worth reading his whole post anyway) are set vision/strategy and communicate broadly, recruit/hire/retain top talent, and make sure there’s enough cash in the bank. It’s great advice.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Tony Saldanha (P&G Next Gen Svces, Transformant), Farhan Shah (Allstate, CTO, Head of Platform Eng), Munu Gandhi (VP Infrastructure, AON), Virginia Lyons (CISO, Williams Sonoma) and GTM advisors?—?Natalie The 10 year bull market where every company’s revenue chart is up and to the right is over. New CXO advisors join?—?

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Hearpreneur

MAY 15, 2019

We will be hiring people with mental and physical disabilities in the near future. I build social media platforms, help procure contracts, assist with infrastructure and more. million in annual revenue. Helping others is what makes my heart full. Giving back and helping others leads to a full filling life for me. 5- Two reasons.

Fractional CTO 122

Fractional CTO Entrepreneur CTO Hire LLC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

In two cases, these businesses were doing significant early revenue ($500K/month+), so could be considered “post-seed”, although both of these companies had not raised significant institutional capital before we led their rounds. Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

This slinging of whatever against the wall to see what sticks does not a market make, is to me a sign of too much capital in the wrong hands, and it's already the most over invested area in recent years- in both human and financial capital- particularly relative to revenue.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. If you want a slice of the pie, there isn’t a better time to get involved. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. In the process, we had also built a simple cohort-based analytics system.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

If you dont make predictions ahead of time, theres no way to call you on it. In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. Or it could be that they are endlessly pecking through menus, totally confused about what to do next.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. See Five Things Meme as an example.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Web Startup Lessons Advice from a CTO and Entrepreneur Home About Finding a Technical Partner for Your Startup Today I received an inquiry from a student at an Ivy League university who wants to launch a web startup. Or you can find seed-stage investors who will give you the money to hire a developer. You have two avenues open to you.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Fractional CTO Partner CTO Hire 40

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

I have come to believe during my time as an operator, entrepreneur and investor that the balance of these skills is so important to the long-term health of a business that if balance is not achieved early then the impact later can be profound - sometimes terminal. My question is one of timing for the distributor.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

The negativity either impacted investment funding (venture capital fell off a cliff in 2009) or the customers they were targeted as was the case for Untitled Partners who were building a platform for fractional art ownership. spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO. During this year they.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 4, 2018

Increasingly powerful systems cracked open the door for real-time predictive analytics. A world of real-time predictions. For some, the age of “real-time” predictive analytics is here. A simple predictive analysis is your arrival time in Waze. the number of purchases or revenue that will occur in the future.

Analytics 131

Analytics Algorithm Artificial Inteligence Campaign 131

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

Derek Sivers about me blog books email list contact How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen 2010-06-19 Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Say, “We are hiring a developer to create only the beginning of an application. Hire one from each.

CTO Hire 84

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Developer, engineer, CTO, or technical co-founder? Sure, it garners the "winning " reply above, but in reality I find this answer that directs the asker to go hire an inexpensive prototype development team much more helpful than the "leading answer" that gives the "Quora rockstar engineer" point of view.

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Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42