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

Both Sides of the Table

And we wanted a head of global marketing. I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan. And I had been telling my partners for a couple of years that I thought Ethan was one of the more talented entrepreneurs I had come across in San Francisco. The company was called Red Beacon.

CTO Coach 359
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Customer Validation - 33 Great Articles

SoCal CTO

Beware of Mentors. His basic point was: If someone, including me, tells you something isn’t a great idea and there’s no market for it there are only two acceptable responses. " Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). It was a top post on StartupRoar on Tuesday.

Customer 227
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Why Solving Big Food & Healthcare Problems Will Yield Spectacular Companies

Both Sides of the Table

We know to do this we need to fund projects that are more difficult in scope, more ambitious in industry transformation, less obvious in market adoption and a higher probability of not working. They have plans to go after they peanut allergies and move on to a host of other food-related illnesses and problems including dairy.

Company 207
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Ryan Blair, HashtagOne: From Gang Member, To Entrepreneur, To Anti-VC

socalTECH

I want to invest in entrepreneurs that have the capacity to be number one at whatever they are doing, and do it within our skill base, which is direct-to-consumer. So, now, as a VC, I swore I'd never treat entrepreneurs like those VCs treated me. I love entrepreneurs. What's the theme of your investments? I know all of that.

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Here is How to Make Sense of Conflicting Startup Advice

Both Sides of the Table

Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. On market segmentation I often recite my “ Elephants, Deer & Rabbits ” framework. On marketing I talk about “ Arming & Aiming ” 4. What is a founder to do?

Startup 407
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Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller

SoCal CTO

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. I was in charge of all product management and marketing for the first year-and-a-half, that was a great learning experience with a very talented team of folks. This time I'm getting to know Mark Geller ( LinkedIn , @markgeller ).

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Advice for CTO Founders: Don't Let Business Kill the Business

SoCal Delicious

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.