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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."
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. Beware the new hire who has "extensive experience" in startups or big companies - using a different growth driver. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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.
“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.&#
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.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. Im an ex-Googler, and now a CTO of a small company with lots of talented people ([link] I discovered your site not long ago, and I am learning a lot from it. where an initial bad impression affects a significantly larger percentage of potential customers.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Joel is focused on the fact that in many environments, programmers are considered "just the hired help" akin to manual labor, and not treated properly. But increasingly we can move to a world where teams are chartered to accomplish results instead of tasked with creating work on spec. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
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. Thats why its so essential to have a co-equal problem team. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
We boast the world’s second highest fixed broadband Internet subscription rate only an inch behind Sweden. Think of Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon), Guido van Rossem (founder of Python programming language and senior engineer at Dropbox) or the more senior Gerard Kleisterlee (chairman of Vodafone).
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. 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. Our paltry funding didnt allow us to buy expensive Sun or SGI boxes, but we had a pretty beefy intel-based box from Dell.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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.
At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.
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