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To customers, to investors, to press, to team members, to potential hires, to partners. Even if you’re the most technical CTO out there, you have to get comfortable with this reality. Hiring a recruiter doesn’t solve for this. Get rid of the negative stereotypes around sales. You can be GREAT at sales.
I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people. This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent. The terms “CTO&# and “VP Engineering&# have such stigmas associated with what they are that I’m sure some people will feel uncomfortable with the definitions I’ve put forward.
Based on my posts Startup CTO or Developer and Acting CTO , Chris O’Meara wrote an interesting post Startup CTO: Could It Work? Common sense says you'd do your best to hire or otherwise permanently engage that lead developer. They were hired to build stuff. I love blog conversations. It's about leading by example.
Very few entrepreneurs have the range of skills and experience to be the solution creator as well as business creator, or operational as well as sales leader. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Carry minimal historical baggage.
Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.
As the organizer of the LA CTO Forum , I get lots of inquiries by job seekers and people looking for CTO / VP Engineering talent. I’ve written quite a bit about aspects of this topic, especially from the perspective of startup founders looking for talent – you can find these in: Startup CTO.
This is not only sad but incredibly frustrating, because it is so easy to see how a great technology can be developed and commercialized if only - if only the CTO hadn't been impulsive and insecure and brought on a business partner too early in the game. … And it’s not just inexperienced CTOs. Lack of confidence? Camaraderie?
Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. You hire great people. You motivate, cajole, reassign tasks, hire, fire and push the organization forward. Most companies that are scaling have CFOs, heads of HR or talent.
As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on.
Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#. He looked stunned.
I've talked about that in lots of other posts, so you can visit some of these to help determine what you specifically need: Startup CTO or Developer Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything Key ingredients in the equation are: How complex is the system? Do you have dollars to pay for development?
The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. No historical baggage.
The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. No historical baggage.
The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. No historical baggage.
The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer.
You can’t afford and don’t want to hire a full-timeCTO or architect. For me, if I can help you within a couple hours Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions , I’m happy to do that and I don’t expect compensation or equity for that. This might be technology, marketing, sales, operations, international expansion, etc.
The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. You hire people who look good on paper. ” Who cut you in on their bonus because even though you’re “just an sales engineer” they know you really deserved more credit for this deal.
The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer.
The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. No historical baggage.
Very few entrepreneurs have the range of skills and experience to be the solution creator as well as business creator, or operational as well as sales leader. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Carry minimal historical baggage.
While the appearance matters, remember you are hiring the development firm primarily for its development skills, not its graphic design skills. It's a strategic choice that extends beyond a one-time development process and into anticipating future needs. cto , product , saas Or do you need help evaluating software firms?
The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer.
A week or so ago, we launched the Key Hire Wire at First Round. VP of Sales, Monetate - Philadelphia, PA A finger hovers above a mouse button. and oh would it go well with the shoes it clicked on the last time it was here. Using Monetate Real-time Marketer, companies are boosting sales while slashing costs and time-to-market.
The right advisor can have a greater impact on the success of your small business than any other hire you ever make. Have a CTO Advisor Provide Their Guidance & Due Diligence Suggestions on a Large Upcoming Technology Expenditure. It’s time small businesses started hiring more advisors.
This required a repeatable and scalable sales process, which required a professional sales staff and a product stable enough that customers wouldn’t return it. Hire a CEO to Go Public. The VCs would hire a CEO with a track record who looked and acted like the type of CEO Wall Street bankers expected to see in large companies.
Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment. This is actually fairly common and I think it’s a bit challenging in that the technology roles (from technology advisor to CTO) in a startup vary widely.
It’s the age-old debate among start-up circles: which is more important to the success of a start-up: the strength of the sales/distribution strategy or the quality of the product? To be successful, a stand-alone company needs a top-notch product and a clever distribution/sales strategy. Today, it’s a different story.
The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Look at the big picture first of development, finance, and marketing/sales. Partner decisions are more important than hiring decisions. Passion for what they do. No historical baggage.
skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Monday, March 12, 2007 MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point The NY Times did a piece today on MyShape, a start-up in Pasadena - Log in Your Measurements, and the Clothes May Fit. “They’re probably a little ahead of their time,&# she said.
Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). Onward & upward DataSift. Startup Lessons'
As a CTO, I can definitely say without a doubt that few people understand what a CTO does. When I tell someone I’m a CTO, I’m often met with a blank stare. Even when someone is aware of what a CTO does, they often have limited context due to the wide variety of CTO roles.
They often make great team members such as head of products, CTO, head of sales, CFO, etc. About 18 months ago in early 2008 we hired an analyst (pre-MBA), but wanted to wait until after Summer to hire a post-MBA associate. We weren’t ready to hire an associate yet so I offered him a summer internship. It was May.
One great solution I see is to hire an outstanding CFO who runs both. Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. I usually encourage people to think about titles like, “Founder & CTO&# or “Founder & VP Marketing.&#.
The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer.
In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. So naturally we’re pushing for him to drop critical information when their paths cross organically.
Sales & Marketing. Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?” Start-up Advice.
Companies also use social networking sites in the hiring process, and increasingly, to do innovative advertising (such as the recent Jack in the Box campaign). Paul Ollinger, West Coast Vice President of Sales of Facebook Paul Ollinger is the West Coast Vice President of Sales for Facebook. He has 20 years’ experience as CTO.
My daily life consists of (a) setting the strategy and rationale of the Engineering & Innovation department, based on a mixture of vision, data, and the needs of the rest of the company, (b) participate in doing the same for the whole company, (c) hire, (d) manage the managers whose teams execute the real work.
Very few entrepreneurs have the range of skills and experience to be the solution creator as well as business creator, or operational as well as sales leader. The reason is that good attributes apply equally well to “external” partners, as they do to internal partners, like a co-founder or CTO. Carry minimal historical baggage.
One other big tell for me is the CEO’s grasp of the sales pipeline. I can’t tell you how many CEO’s I’ve met with who can’t walk me through the details of their sales pipeline. I want the names of the key buyers, the last time you met them, who the competition is and what are the criteria for a decision.
At a board meeting yesterday, a management team was talking about their hiring needs and some of the challenges they're having hiring great people. Here's a simple tip: track hiring analytics and assign them to someone. If you're not interviewing enough people, you're not going to be able to hire someone--simple as that.
They hire a team, spend months planning, their engineers build it, and… the final product isn’t quite right. To go back to the drawing board would require time and money most small businesses can’t afford. For businesses that deal with customer data, sales data, or similar information, these tools are game-changers.
To learn more about how your startup can find, hire and keep the top talent and quality workers it needs to succeed, download this free ReadWriteWeb Report: The Talent Wars: Today’s Toughest Startup Challenge. And you need to do it sooner rather than later. So what does it actually take to build a kickass startup team?
Projecting from the seed stage, there are two types of team-building topics you want to address – key senior hires and org-level team building. As the company progresses through product market fit (PMF), you will want to highlight other key senior hires required to scale and round out the functional expertise of the exec team.
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