Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Things like “ participating preferred stock &# in legalese unsurprisingly never actually call out, “hey, this is the participating preferred language.&# We got a3x participating liquidation preference with interest (not participating with a 3x cap, but 3x participating. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

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

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. Every time a startup raises capital, all common shareholders are diluted. In cases where a startup is sold within a few years time, there is often acceleration agreements for unvested shares.

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

Hire everyone you need as an employee. After launching our Windows online backup service five years ago, our CTO pitched that we should focus on launching our Mac version next. At that time, Mac computers made up a mere 6 percent of the market and I argued we needed to focus on other areas. We split our stock one-fifth each.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Kenya Dilution 143

www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

Growth, Profitability, and the Stock Price. Stock buybacks. What does a CTO do? Growth, Profitability, and the Stock Price. What does a CTO do? What does a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) do in a high-tech company? So what is the CTO job? This is where you should see the CTO. What goes around.

CTO 40

CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Architecture 40

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 2, 2011

She was the former CTO of Cisco Systems from 1998-2000, and is on the boards of Disney and Packet Design and was a board member at Sun and FedEx for many years. Precept Software, another of her startups, was bought by Cisco just prior to the company's stock price run-up, "so we had a great outcome for our investors.".

CTO Hire 118

CTO Hire Startup Algorithm Leadership 118

The Next Web

AUGUST 12, 2013

Finding co-founders is hard, and I would never recommend to hire a co-founder – usually you start a business with people you know for years (as there is already an existing level of trust there and you also know they are capable of fulfilling their duties). They should be able to hire great designers to help build a better product.

Cofounder 119

Cofounder CTO Hire Startup Europe 119

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

I was originally hired as a contractor, developing a SaaS app from scratch, including DB design and coding. Along the way, I was hired full time (I believe about 8 months after I started), a coder from India was hired and another contractor was added to the team. omissions/lies on the part of founders & investors. .

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

Correction: Last week's CTO position at Modcloth is actually a San Francisco opportunity, not Pittsburgh. If you know of senior level business and technical professionals looking for exciting startup opportunities, they can sign up here: [link].

San Francisco 92

San Francisco CTO Hire Developer EC2 92

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2017

31 ( limited to the first 200 Gold Passholders.)

Lean 108

Lean Programming San Francisco Cofounder 108

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

As the conversation began to get down to how much stock and salary we could offer van Dam, we left the barber to finish his work and went to a payphone to call our CEO to confirm the deal. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He We were painting a picture of hypertext on every desktop computer. The response from across the country?

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 14, 2013

Today's post is brought to you by my friend, Paul Blumenfeld , a recruiter who is one of the most thoughtful people I know when it comes to hiring processes. Many hiring managers write a job spec that is heavy on wishes and low on real needs. I also ask hiring managers to be open-minded about their must-haves. Like Pornography?

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Matching Hiring 54

www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

The most common comment in this long and complicated MBA Mondays series on Employee Equity is the question of how much equity should you grant when you make a hire. For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula. First, a caveat.

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

However, your partner could just as easily have argued that her sweat equity is worth $250,000 since that's what a prototype would have cost you to make had you hired a prototype development firm. Or she could argue that the prototype is so critical to the business that she should get 50 percent of the company's stock.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Startup Company Lawyer

MAY 1, 2009

For example, below are the 2008 results for average equity granted at time of hire in IT companies: CEO 5.40%. Head of Technology/CTO 1.19%. Tags: Stock options. The 2008 results are available on Altgate and are also embedded below. President/COO 2.58%. Head of Engineering 1.32%. Head of Sales 1.20%.

Stock Options 31

Stock Options CTO Hire Israel Equity 31

Startup Company Lawyer

MAY 4, 2009

Joe Betts-LaCroix – CTO, OQO. Hiring and Firing. July 14th, 2009: Implement hiring policies and practices. Description: When to hire and when to fire? How to hire the best vendors for the best rates. Mentors for the Summer 2009 Semester include: Trip Adler – CEO, Scribd. Jason Calacanis - CEO, Mahalo.

Founder 28

Founder Warrant San Francisco Intellectual Property 28

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. Delaware law gives preferred stock investors of a corporation certain voting rights and control over the corporation. The business model. Pick a name for your business.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

www.quora.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Type to Add and Search Questions; Search Topics and People Startups Startup Compensation Entrepreneurship Compensation Stock Options Major Internet Companies Silicon Valley Why is there such a large founder to early employee equity drop-off? Is there a difference between getting equity, stock, shares? Founder or employee?

Equity 40

Equity Employee Founder Cofounder 40

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

At one of our initial board meetings we had agreed on the general principle of an advisory board and put together an overall stock budget to compensate advisors. One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems.

Advisory Board 266

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 266

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 24, 2013

At the time, RIM was the dominant smartphone company and Livingston settled into a “process-heavy” job within the company, where he worked tirelessly all hours. “By At the end of my four-month term, they brought me on part-time to run a team that built out a system around the software I’d developed at night.”.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Startup Mobile 167

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

The reality however is that entrepreneurs should only play the equity game with newer, very focused firms that specialize in this practice and not traditional work for hire or a blend. Development firms that advertise part equity and cash are simply not mature in defining their model, and thus they have no business taking stakes in others.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

www.metamorphblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

We hired three guys from that batch and paid them in iPhones. Treat everyone you hire like a co-founder. It builds trust and earns buy-in from the people you hire. When you’re hiring folks, don’t promise equity upfront. Tiny, contracting market. You’ll be the only startup there. Vest, young man.

Founder 51

Founder Startup Cofounder Vesting 51

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. Slow adoption but soaring interest. Data, data, and data.

Analytics 131

Analytics Algorithm Artificial Inteligence Campaign 131

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Founded by former Facebook CTO Bret Taylor and Google App Engine creator Kevin Gibbs, Quip was recognized by Technology Review as one of the “ Breakthrough Technologies of 2014 ” for making it effortless and fruitful to create and edit documents on mobile devices for real-time collaboration.

API 60

API Software Review Technical Review Startup 60

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

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. If you are a startup looking to hire really excellent people, take notice of.NET on a resume, and ask why it’s there. Expensify Blog. Expense Reports That Don't Suck. Sjoerd Franken.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107