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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

.&# Most startups tend to think they are selling into an Existing market – a market exists and your company has a faster and better product. 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.

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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.

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David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Ideally, the economics of a development investment look like those of a cash investment; typically, a seed investor will get no more than about 20% of a company for his capital. Second, the company must eventually own the product development and maintenance functions in-house.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

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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. I agree with the less is more product development approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that product development is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product.

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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? ) Eric, I landed upon your blog when I was searching for the path to CTO a couple of months back and I have been a frequent to the site since then. Your "startup-lessons-learned" are very valuable.

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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.&#

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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. Making this fear-reduction strategy work required more than just the core team getting used to continuous deployment. Interesting article, Eric.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

The more work youve sunk into a product or vision, the harder it is to let it go. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. Ironically, although its the solution team that is the early-warning system ("canary in the coal mine") for pivots, its actually hard for the solution team to make the decision to pivot.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

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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.

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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 2, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

San Francisco 133

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Smart teams understand quickly that all three skills are essential - if you can't recognize the need, you won't be able to hire for it or value it. Distribution/sales guy-Has an awesome understanding of the industry and product and can sell the vision and problem you are solving to investors, users, and potential partners. (he

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right. I had heard that all great companies built their applications on Oracle.

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