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If you have a software development background like mine, I’m sure you often get questions about when to outsource, versus building the solution in-house. If your software or your manufacturing process is your “secret sauce,” you need to keep the work in-house. The same applies to manufacturing and almost any process these days.
The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. uBeam’s tech does work and I have safely seen it demo’d in the real life many times. Of course the naysayers are out again.
I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. Of course, I have an advantage because I organize the LA CTO Forum. Of course, since you know those questions, you can just collect up the answers and provide them to your developers.
They can read reviews, see pictures and even talk to the family before confirming. I typed in my brothers zip code and ton of houses popped up in his area and I was able to search out on a map view. I then clicked on reviews, looked at pictures and read the owners descriptions of what they were looking for. I registered.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any? What Is This? Send brief bios.
Many of the founders of these companies are surprised to learn that I'm willing to review what they are doing (maybe an hour) and get on the phone for an hour with them and provide free advice. Of course, I provide part-time CTO services. What's you believe is your biggest technology risk, if any? What Is This? Send brief bios.
The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. We only want software revenue.” We prefer to sell software, not get involved with client systems.”
It is often the fortuitous mixture of new technologies, customer awareness and then acceptance of the technology and then the slow adoption into our daily lives that leads to markets exploding. We technology leaders also make this mistake. He was tech. In the end, of course, our productivity actually suffered.
And do I fit as a Part-Time CTO , Technology Advisor , CTO Founder , Acting CTO ? Consider what Ryan Waggoner tells us How to Find a Technical Cofounder : When I was doing freelance development, I had about one pitch per week for an equity-only opportunity. Go to tech (or other relevant industry) events. Go to user groups.
David encourages entrepreneurs to stay away from the big tech firms (such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) because they are hard to compete with. I believe entrepreneurs should, in David’s words, “build big businesses on the outskirts” but I don’t believe that Silicon Valley tech giants will outmaneuver startups.
His ideas to date hadn’t totally resonated and of course ideas matter, too. His message was that he realized he needed to move his girlfriend’s stuff into a storage facility due to apartment flooding. They built the software. The first one out even won a major tech conference award. Of course there is competition!
Good entrepreneurs can admit when their course of action was wrong and learn from it. I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions. Good entrepreneurs are wrong often. I said that was my point.
Bill Gates once famously said that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the 1-year timeframe and underestimate its impact in the 10-year timeframe. I tend not to go into heat when I hear the latest buzz on the tech blogs about the latest gadgets. My favorite new software tool is DailyBurn.
Healthvana , a health tech startup that began with a specific focus on providing patient information digitally for individuals living with HIV, is helping Los Angeles County roll out mobile vaccination records for COVID-19 using Apple’s Wallet technology. “We look and feel like Instagram.
I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. If you want to understand the details of why this is, I covered it in detail in this post, Understanding Changes in the Software Industry.
It profiles one little girl who finished her course work at a private Christian school in her neighborhood but was unable to attend graduation because her mom got behind on payments. They are often raised by single moms, grandparents or under-educated immigrant parents who want the same thing for their children that we do for our own.
The company provides SAT, ACT, and other similar test preparation courses and related software. I had worked as a tutor for Princeton Review, and Jake for Kaplan. We thought, we could put out a better product than Kaplan or Princeton Review, which would be more compelling, and also would tie in a strong social mission.
Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. If you spent the 3 years perfecting some hugely differentiated technology IP that may also be different. of course there are MUCH more sophisticated financial tools than either of these, but PEG is a short-hand many people use].
But VC is an “illiquid asset&# so funds didn’t disappear quickly - In 2000/01 the stock market quickly adjusted punishing investors in the NASDAQ and in individual public technology stocks. It takes less to start a business these days – We all know that it takes less to start a technology company these days.
Reviewing financial & operational performance. You may have raised money across multiple rounds of investors from 3-4 different VCs and of course most of them would like board seats or at a minimum board observer rights. Defections of large swaths of talented employees due to low morale. Mentorship. As You Start to Mature.
Lynda.com offers up online education courses on things like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Microsoft Excel, AutoCAD, and much more. Lynda.com is unique in that it started out as a bootstrapped business operated out of the personal website (Lynda.com) of co-founder Lynda Weinman, in the not-so-technology hotbed town of Ojai.
I worked in both before leaving to work in a software company at 17. “Of course I can. ” Jacob, “Of course I can have a piece. I had a business class seat due to status of flying a lot and my family was in economy. My mom bought our family’s first computer and encouraged me to learn it at 13.
At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. After all, that’s what tech innovation is all about. ” Of course, it’s more complicated than just checking boxes on a question list. But there are some common elements too.
After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. When Marc Benioff declared “the end of software” industry insiders scoffed. Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary.
One is obvious, without protection, such IP might prove to be of little worth, as other companies can mimic the technology without recourse. The very nature of formal IP approval process ensures that some level of vetting has been performed to assess whether the IP is infringing on another company’s technology. Provisional Approach.
Of course I have. Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. You need to have passionate tech entrepreneurs who want to build businesses locally. I’m in Seattle this week.
If you have a software development background like mine, I’m sure you often get questions about when to outsource, versus building the solution in-house. If your software or your manufacturing process is your “secret sauce,” you need to keep the work in-house. The same applies to manufacturing and almost any process these days.
Over the course of the first few months I saw a few people out on the street taking Birds and then a steady uptick in riders. Capital of course drives scale advantages and when you have “winner take most” markets it also has a way of scaring away some investors from investing in the 3–5th “me too” competitors. There is nothing viral!
Southern California's technology community--despite all of the recent excitement around Silicon Beach--continues to be underserved in terms of capital, with a lack of venture capital funds (with money), and other private technology investors. Jeb Spencer: We consider ourselves a private equity firm.
However due to much controversy and competition, the same hasn’t played true while at large events (*cough* SXSW ). Few have tried in recently months with little success; generally due to city regulations on competing with the local taxi services, but Callaway’s social and brand presence should help this be success.
We are now harnessing the ‘social’ aspect of the system where businesses and consumers begin to contribute to the data by adding or updating products listings as well as rate and review products.”. You can build software a lot quicker and cheaper as well. I am obsessed with technology. I would have done all of this for free.
At Inverted Software we often help our clients manage offshore and onshore development teams. Our proprietary processes and unique experience helps us evaluate and correct software development practices that have proven inefficient and instill practices that insure productivity and success. Developers love to experiment.
The company--which is in the business of operating a content delivery network (CDN) to accelerate the delivery of web graphics, multimedia, applications, and more to end users-- recently disclosed it more than doubled its revenues in 2012, and has grown to over 230 employees--all due to a huge amount of demand for CDN services by its customers.
We are now harnessing the ‘social’ aspect of the system where businesses and consumers begin to contribute to the data by adding or updating products listings as well as rate and review products.”. You can build software a lot quicker and cheaper as well. I am obsessed with technology. I would have done all of this for free.
Finally, we want it cheap (of course). Here’s the latest technology. Of course, you both need to have compatible smart phones with the software already downloaded. The scan hardware here is required for all software solutions. Yet my experience is that shareware software is usually worth what you pay for it.
I fund startups for a living and before that I ran two software startups that I founded. With a standard tech startup I can tell you in my sleep that your two biggest cost items by a long shot are people (between 60–75% of total costs) and space (10–20% of total costs). Unintended use cases By now, we’ve seen a lot!
Building a strong tech industry to rival that of Silicon Valley is definitely no easy feat, but the overall feeling within Cal Tech’s Baxter Hall at last week’s event certainly bodes well for the year. Their presentation ended in a quick trivia round about science, a category which (of course), the techy audience chose.
Finally, we want it cheap (of course). This smart phone app places all your contact information into a single QR code image. Anyone with one of the many QR code scanning apps on their phone can take a photo of your code to be taken directly to your contact information. Commercial software. Shareware.
If you have a software development background like mine, Im sure you often get questions about when to outsource, versus building the solution in-house. If your software or your manufacturing process is your secret sauce, you need to keep the work in-house. The same applies to manufacturing and almost any process these days.
This year we’re in > 100+ cities and 100+ campuses and we’re operational with street teams, better software, better bikes and a more informed ridership. Of course it takes time to roll out new scooters and replace existing inventory but this is already having a dramatic effect on the underlying business. It’s too lucrative not to.
It’s true that we also fund more mundane stuff like B2B software aimed at productivity improvements but we want some big bets in every fund where we feel we can contribute to “making our own little dent in the universe” as the saying goes – by backing ambitious entrepreneurs with that same goal. But it will take time.
Visions pan of endless cold emails and long days attending meetups and pitch nights while your operations/tech team grind away. Not that good old fashioned leg work isn’t still required of course.). But of course, this isn’t to be mixed up. You’ve built a great business, your customers love you.
Here is an entry-level benchmark for the new software personal assistants: Simple and intuitive communication. Technology environment savvy. Technology environment savvy. A good assistant know how get things done efficiently, recognizing user hardware and software limitations. Memorable personality.
We use gestures or our voice to control our engagement with our technology. We take courses on-line. We use QR codes to simplify the process. None of this could be mined successfully in the past generation of technology. 62% look at online peer reviews. We read increasingly using our digital devices.
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