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. Please let this be a lesson to everyone – founders and CTOs. Find a lawyer and someone who does CTO searches for VC backed companies in your area. Or was it options?

CTO 150

CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 4, 2010

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.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Technical Advisors CTO Coach Startup 170

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 31, 2013

For those of you who haven’t heard, President Obama and US CTO Todd Park have established a National Day of Civic Hacking this weekend, in cities across the nation. Developer mentors and judges from AT&T, i.am.angel, Google, Scopely, CGI, Factual, and ESRI and the City and County of LA will support coders during the weekend.

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CTO Coach Startup Mentor Ideas 295

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

I promised I would write this post with some thoughts and ideas on the topic. Your technical advisor can likely help. Here are some ideas: In your company or other companies. Ask around for ideas on where they hang out. I've recently received several emails from people looking for a technical cofounder for their startup.

CTO Hire 211

CTO Hire CTO Coach Startup Equity 211

SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

It’s generally a good idea to go through each of these line items to try to better understand what’s involved, especially for the ones that are bigger or that don’t seem to line up with your understanding of complexity. I.e., they need a developer more than they need a CTO. I just want the cost, timeline and impact.

Develop 280

Develop Development CTO Coach CTO Hire 280

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

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

Customer Custom CTO Coach Startup 227

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. So we discussed his ideas several times. He wanted to be the guy who did it.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It was a great conversation and I thought it would be a good idea to do some visible networking with Aaron to get to know him better. We are not “finders” and usually serve the role of advisor and attorney. Sometimes we draft business plans and coach the entrepreneurs on their pitch, and sometimes we even help develop a business model.

Startup 150

Startup SEO Pepperdine Blogging 150

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

They look at the following high level definition of Lean: and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build. Do you have a Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One ? What's Going to Go Wrong A lot of founders don't really understand Lean Startup principles.

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CTO Coach Metrics Framework Software Development 219

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 17, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Saturday, February 17, 2007 Finding Good Developers in Los Angeles? Im part of a CTO group that meets once a month to discuss various topics. If anyone has ideas on how to reach into to find candidates or other ways to find good people, I would love to hear it.

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Los Angeles CTO Hire CTO Coach Develop 150

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Sunday, February 25, 2007 Interesting Model for University President Saw a post by Paul Kedrosky pointing us to Graeme Thickins on How Stanford Does It. Its interesting to think about how universities might want to have their staff better aligned with moving ideas from the lab to start-ups.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Startup 150

SoCal CTO

MAY 27, 2010

You can follow the link above for more details, but the basic idea is that most startup founders have a pretty good understanding of the basics of what they want to do and a vision for the product. There are a bunch of questions in Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything and in Startup CTO or Developer.

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CTO Hire Develop Development Startup 170

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Kevin Federline Search Engine Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. Take a look at other sites: [link] But the overall idea is to provide branded search in order to get merchandise from your artist, star, etc.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte. The more we dug the more confident we became (and so did every advisor we used). Meredith Perry came up with the idea for uBeam while still in college at University of Pennsylvania and like many great inventors won her school’s business plan competition.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Sunday, February 25, 2007 Challenge of Predicting Winners I just read a bit on the payout to YouTube from the Google Acquisition ( Internet News , CNN ). But even if you came to me with that idea, Im not sure I would have bought it. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

And I spoke with the CTO of another great company I used to be on the board of and enlisted his support in potentially being an advisor to one company. Finally, I think it’s worth meeting “mentors.” In his book he talked about mavens as being those people who are connected and through whom ideas spread faster.

Networking 366

Networking Startup CTO Coach Email 366

SoCal Tech Calendar

MARCH 19, 2010

Featuring presentations and panel discussion by experts on Linked-in, Facebook, and other internal and external social media tools. See [link] (more).

Social Media 100

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socalTECH

MAY 25, 2012

If you were a student in college, working on a startup idea, what would spur you to drop your education plans, and go full time on your startup? I started playing around with a similar idea in my freshman year. He really took to the idea, and enjoyed it. Both have been great mentors ever since.

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Startup CTO Coach Content Web 239

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 1, 2008

Then the organizer went into a 20 minute sales pitch around his new training/coaching offering. What's interesting about that opinion is that there were people in the room who were more than happy to share their ideas around tools and techniques to use as part of the discussion. It felt like a bad time share presentation.

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SEM SEO West Los Angeles Case Study 150

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. How-to get that guy as your mentor - Gabriel Weinberg , September 20, 2010 Forming a couple of good mentor relationships can help bridge the gap between startup failure and success, especially for first-time entrepreneurs.

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Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2016

I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. We can’t wait to see what the next few years bring.

Company 207

Company Companies CTO Coach Funding 207

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

Is the idea to have multiple projects as part of the company? We have some great mentors now. Thanks to TechStars, we've got an awesome mentor who's co-habitating with us now, and we're learning something daily from him. It's actually uncommon to have a female CTO. We're also updating the format.

Startup 242

Startup CTO Coach Blogging Social Media 242

socalTECH

MARCH 10, 2010

Those include how-to on resumes, aptitude tests, videos, coaching seminars, and more of that nature. If you have a good idea, a good marketplace with certain characteristics, every company needs technology, every company needs finance, sales, marketing, and operations--that's the hard part.

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Startup Content Sites CTO Coach 223

SoCal CTO

MARCH 18, 2010

More Visible Networking Marketing, Startups and Networking in Los Angeles – Cliff Allen Los Angeles Technology Connector – Kurt Daradics Product Manager Entrepreneur Mark Geller Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouhi Attorney and Startup Business Advisor – Aaron Shechet Negative Customer Acquisition Costs - Creative Startup Marketing Ideas (..)

Startup 225

Startup Los Angeles Twiistup Social Network 225

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

However, on the other hand, some ideas are more sensitive than others especially in the development phase, and an entrepreneur should be careful to disclose the idea only to those in whom he/she has a reasonable level of trust and who are genuinely in a position to help the company. Tell Rod about the LA CTO Forum.

Product 150

Product Entrepreneur Social Media Google 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 22, 2021

Startups often find it difficult to retain key personnel and to control proprietary ideas. Startups can’t usually afford a business development team, so that effort is just one of the measurements that should fall on every CTO and CEO. External scanning for resources. Partial acquisition.

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Organization CTO Hire Outsource Development Startup 132

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Entrepreneurs are supposed to have insights that others don’t have and we’re supposed to be good judges about which entrepreneurs and executives have both the most clever ideas and the right skill sets to do transformational things against all odds. I don’t think this is the job. So I tell people we’re fundamentally in the people business.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital CTO Coach Startup 150

socalTECH

JUNE 9, 2014

We have 25 ideas on ways to publish or package that content, and put it into clip shows on television or other formats. I began as an advisor, and then started spending a week, then two, then three. Because we own the library, we''re able to put those into ten or twenty different formats. That''s how each of those pieces evolved.

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Media Content Startup IP 235

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 20, 2013

If both the CEO and the CTO are needed to attend an important meeting out of town, who will fulfill their roles of running the company smoothly? In the startup world, being able to stick to a plan and take actions according to those plans will bring your ideas and visions into reality. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

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Startup CTO Coach Coach Study 94

SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. I have met dozens of brilliant technologists with fantastic ideas, ideas requiring nurturing, mentoring and support. So my advice to CTO / Founders?

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CTO Coach CTO Hire Outsource Development Mentor 28

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 26, 2012

The idea was getting mature and by end of June we had the first version. I was the CEO of aki-aki and Gabriel Palomino was the CTO. At Ioui Apps we believe in the idea of creating a new interaction system for social networks. Any mentors or VC’s? No mentors and no investors so far, we are open to discussion.

Social Network 89

Social Network Startup CTO Coach Social Media 89

socalTECH

JANUARY 25, 2016

I started as a teenager, and I did babysitting, life guarding, and swim coaching. We've had a lot of advisors along the way, in the financial and technology realm, which has helped us with everything. The biggest transition for us, was taking on a co-founder, our CTO, who has the really intensive tech background.

Demand 100

Demand CTO Coach Screening CTO Hire 100

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 15, 2011

For those who may be unfamiliar with the Biz2Beach conference, its a networking conference of thought leaders, innovators, and trendsetters for a day of exchanging ideas. He is also an advisor to multiple startups and regular speaker at conferences like SMX, SXSW Interactive, and PubCon.

SEO 85

SEO CTO Coach Conference Social Media 85

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Startups often find it difficult to retain key personnel and to control proprietary ideas. Startups can’t usually afford a business development team, so that effort is just one of the measurements that should fall on every CTO and CEO. External scanning for resources. Partial acquisition.

CTO Hire 91

CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development Resource 91

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2013

Startups often find it difficult to retain key personnel and to control proprietary ideas. Startups can’t usually afford a business development team, so that effort is just one of the measurements that should fall on every CTO and CEO. External scanning for resources. Partial acquisition.

Acquisition 88

Acquisition CTO Hire Startup Outsource Development 88

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 31, 2011

We also had awesome group of mentors that included: David Waxman (Co-founder of PeoplePC, Spot Runner and Firefly Network), Paige Craig (CEO of BetterWorks ), Josh MacAdam (Co-founder/CTO at Ming.ly We had over 30 pitches and classic SUW team voting that followed, resulting in the final 12 most popular ideas. Rob Maigret.

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Los Angeles Startup Angel Tech Coast Angels 73

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 22, 2014

HV: Our main competitive advantage is the idea of personalization. AA: In the beginning your idea is a hypothesis and you need to validate it. HV: The I-Corps mentors are very experienced entrepreneurs and they will just tell you straight up what they think of your results. How is Movn different than your competition?

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USC Southern California Activity Study 104