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Customer Validation - 33 Great Articles

SoCal CTO

Beware of Mentors. I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers." 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." Customer Validation 101.

Customer 227
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Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder

SoCal CTO

The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. Even with these, you will have paper-tested your MVP, but the reality is that customers will not be able to assess the value to them until they actually use it. The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key Startup Metrics for the business.

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Top 120 Startup Posts for 2010

SoCal CTO

500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? First Principles.

Startup 378
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Announcing a Deal I’ve Wanted to Talk About for a Year

Both Sides of the Table

I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan. And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. The company was called Red Beacon. So there you have it.

CTO Coach 359
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Hiring Developers Before Product/Market Fit?

SoCal CTO

Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. In many cases, during my Free Startup CTO Consulting Session with them, we discuss where they are in in the process. The startup founder is definitely not ready to hire a CTO. Far from it.

CTO Hire 205
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Technology Roles in Startups

SoCal CTO

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. I am looking for one or two startups that I can work with on their road to success as a virtual C-level officer, board member, advisor or other relationship.

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People Management: Startup Teams Should Dip but not Skip

Both Sides of the Table

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition. Skipping is insidious.

Startup 308