CTO and Customer Development

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering.

CTO

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Its a nice complement on the product engineering side to his customer development methodology.

Customer Development

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer

Customer Validation - 33 Great Articles

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." " Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). Customer Validation 101. billion dollar mistake.

Customer

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean

See More than 120 Speakers and Mentors at The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He’ll talk about making a profit and making a difference in a conversation with New Media Ventures’ Christie George. Todd Park convened the team that saved Obamacare.

Lean

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE

Why Lean May Save Your Life – The I-Corps @ NIH

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

The key members of the team CEO, CTO, Principal investigator, need to be actively engaged talking to customers, partners, regulators, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , National Science Foundation. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences National Science Foundation'

Lean

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development

The Government Starts an Incubator: The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean

The Lean Startup SXSW 2013

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Vinod Khosla Founder Dave McClure Founding Partner Eric Ries Author Steve Blank Serial Entrepreneur & Professor Todd Park CTO Travis Kalanick CEO & Co-Founder Joe Zadeh Director of Product Sam Shank Co-Founder & CEO NEW! Nicole Lazzaro President Udi Nir CTO NEW!

Lean

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering

10 C-Level Positions That Are Red Flags For Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag.

CTO Hire

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations

10 Job Titles Never Found in an Investable Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag.

CTO Hire

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor

Ten Executive Titles You Don’t Want in a Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag.

CTO Hire

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor

Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences – Value Proposition and Customers

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

The UCSF Office of Innovation and Technology ( Erik Lium and Stephanie Marrus) is the reason the program exists. Each of the teams is assigned a mentor to match their domainv(Head of device R&D of Phillips, Genetech, Crescendo, CTO of UCSF, venture capitalists from Sofinnova, Burrill, Lightstone, M34, etc.).

Lean

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development

Lessons Learned: About the author

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? ) He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO

10 C-Level Positions That Are Red Flags For Funding

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag.

CTO Hire

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations

Lessons Learned: The lean startup

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.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment

Hear how the Lean Startup began — and helped one company find success: Episode 2 on Sirius XM Channel 111: Eric Ries and Jon Sebastiani

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. He later co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU and then authored The Lean Startup. Listen to my entire chat with Eric: If you can’t hear the interview, click here. Taking My Class.

Lean

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel

Are You Putting Your Rock Star Customers To Work?

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

For example, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) develops excellent technology in the data storage and knowledge management space, led by visionary Chief Technology Officer Hu Yoshida, and has won passionate customers in the process.

Customer

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review

Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He I liked the fact that you linked to the wikipedia page for a payphone — nice touch Reply Chris Ryland , on October 5, 2009 at 12:06 pm Said: Where did Ben Wegbreit fit in the Convergent picture?

North Carolina

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

A Part-Time CTO - In-House or Outsource?

blog.aparttimecto.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

A Part-Time CTO Technology. Communication - Hiring a technical employee early on can sometimes result in a founder developer gap. While your team is trying to iterate and perform Customer Developer , your tech staff will be idle. In Plain English. Archive Jun 20th Sun In-House or Outsource?

CTO Hire

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Equity Vesting

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 32: Evangelos Simoudis and Ashok Srivastava

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

I presented them to our chief product officer and our CTO. Filed under: Customer Development. It included things like advertising, marketing analytics, cyber security. There were things like drones in there. Very, very far-fetched ideas, frankly. Both of them started to see that these things could be executed.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics

Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “We had to ignore them, because they weren’t our target audience – and were never likely to become customers.&# That all-hands lasted five minutes. Which is a nice story. says Rachleff.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. Its now a technique I recommend for any web-based startup.

SEM

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. A really good technology executive can notice problems like the ones Im talking about today and address them proactively. The trick is to hire a good one - I wrote a little about this in What does a startup CTO actually do? I would love to have an effective CTO or VP of Engineering to manage me.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE

10 lessons I learned by taking the entrepreneurial Red Pill

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward. Please note that you don’t need to become the CTO of your own company as a non-technical founder. I found this a real waste of time and energy.

Netherlands

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean

He's Only in Field Service

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development

Lessons Learned: Ideas. Code. Data. Implement. Measure. Learn

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Fear is the mind-killer

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

where an initial bad impression affects a significantly larger percentage of potential customers. 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. May 11, 2009 9:42 PM Artem said. Interesting article, Eric.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Audience

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 20: Nayeem Hussain and Will Zell

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. . … our product is manufactured in Shenzhen, China … along with most of the high-tech electronics in the world, so we had to locate a factory, we had to find the right partner to build this product and work with us …. Steve : Did you personally know about any of this?

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur

Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boston Tech Community (Fall 2013 Edition)

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

link] – Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Dharmesh Shah – Co-founder and CTO, HubSpot ( blog , @dharmesh). No agenda, just come by and talk tech at Voltage.

Boston

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

This is a good sign for you! :) I subscribed because I was inspired by the O'Reilly video, and feel I want to go deeper into the customer development field. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So why you? 4) I would like to see more of what I've seen.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

On deployment

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Five case studies you'll see at the Lean Startup Conference 2015

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

Every year, our team conducts more than 500 customer development calls to understand what challenges the community is facing. At the 2014 Lean Startup Conference, Todd Park, former CTO of the United States and current advisor to the White House, concluded his panel discussion with the following sentence: “come work for us.”

Lean

Lean United States Fractional CTO Startup

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Distribution

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Test-Driven Development as andon cord

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC

Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean

Waves of technology platforms

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean

Advisors aren’t pokemon (but they are magical)

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

If the founding team is non-technical and you can’t figure out whether you are being screwed by your developers or whether your potential new CTO is amazing, a tech advisor can help by joining you in interviews and reviewing commits. Situations where advisors can add huge value.

Technical Review

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review

Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

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Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

A Part-Time CTO - In-House or Outsource?

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 32: Evangelos Simoudis and Ashok Srivastava

Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

10 lessons I learned by taking the entrepreneurial Red Pill

Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

He's Only in Field Service

Lessons Learned: Ideas. Code. Data. Implement. Measure. Learn

Fear is the mind-killer

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Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boston Tech Community (Fall 2013 Edition)

Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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Five case studies you'll see at the Lean Startup Conference 2015

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

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Advisors aren’t pokemon (but they are magical)

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