SoCal CTO

JANUARY 18, 2011

I received an inquiry from a reader of my blog and thought I would provide some thoughts, but would definitely welcome input: I am an unpaid CTO of a small startup. I have been working full time with two founders for about 10 months on full time basis. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs.

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

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? The good news is that likely is not what they want.

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SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Early Employees To help with this discussion, let me start with a definition of "early employee." " Steve Blank divides the individuals associated with startups as: Founders Early Employees (Employees # 1-25) Later Employees (Employees # 26-125) The reality is that the definition of founder and employee is not clear.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. This is when your job function truly starts to match the definition of “leader” because that’s exactly what your role is. You hire great people. You course correct.

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SoCal CTO

JULY 23, 2012

I seem to encounter a lot of people who want to attach a CTO label to me as I'm the only programmer on the founding team of three. While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit. Who will do that?

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. And of course on Twitter I’ve seen the Tweets, ReTweets and superlatives on what a great post it is. But my definition of the word is much broader. Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios.

Startup 390

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SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

they need a developer more than they need a CTO. Of course, you probably are going to provide more of a feature list. Ideally, you would have had a technical advisor, had better up-front definition, had more iteration, then you would not be in this situation. Maybe even something like small, medium, large, Xlarge.

Development 280

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socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

The Internet doesn't work right, and is broken, and without a CDN, you can't do what you need to do if you're the CTO of a large website. Of course, since we're venture backed, we do have to consider our investors, as they're looking at some point for an exit. We're in the domain of hiring relatively technical people, gearheads.

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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.

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