Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Add basic partner contracts or alliances. Invest in selective strategic alliances. Partial acquisition.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. Or he may be the founder’s brother, idea person, or inventor, who can’t be bothered actually working on the nuts and bolts of the real business. If your business is managing contracts and patents, it makes sense, but the CLO for most startups is LegalZoom on the Internet.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

Today’s $24 billion storage market in the US has these same key disadvantages and that was the genesis of Sam Rosen’s initial idea for MakeSpace , which I initially funded 15 months ago. He had an idea to make it better. We then riffed on the idea of, “That’s interesting.

Technical Review 380

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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. in Computer Science.

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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.

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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. in Computer Science.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

I’m super excited to announce that GRP Partners led the investment in Ethan Anderson’s new company MyTime (link has LA-based merchants but will give you a good feel for the product). Because I knew that Ethan was on to a powerful idea and one in which he had developed huge competence and domain knowledge in.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 3, 2011

Will had this idea about unsubscriptions, and formulating an idea around creating a way to unsubscribe people from newsletters, and he started talking to me about it. I had been doing some angel investing, and incubating several projects. Fred Wilson has a pretty good track record on investments he's done in the web space.

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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.

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SoCal Delicious

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Read more » Recent Press The New York Times April 22, 2009 - A Company Plans to Market Illiquid Assets CNBC.com April 8, 2008 - Social Stock Picking Reuters April 6, 2009 - Bit.ly Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Who in the auto industry believed Tesla, a totally electric car, was a good idea? of Elon’s ideas to come to fruition and let him fail on the rest. If there is something holding these big ideas back, it is not a shortage of money or even the barrier of insurmountable technical hurdles. Now they are partners. Working on it.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions. It’s not merely that you need a scalable idea to grow. If you have such an idea and don’t grow fast enough, competitors will. LPs (the people who invest in VC funds) want to know what “hot” deals you’re in.

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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. So we discussed his ideas several times. So over several months I went through a few iterations on his idea. They are filled with ideas and they get those ideas onto paper.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Your First Iteration of an Idea Will Be Wrong.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2014

You fill out the short questionnaire, lawyers submit their price quotes, and they get hired. I had been wanting to combined entrepreneurship and law, so we started brainstorming ideas. We''ve worked out he bugs, and since then have hired a full time CTO and others. That happens in just a five minute process.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2014

I spent an hour on the phone working with Sam Rosen, the CEO of MakeSpace on a senior exec he is considering hiring. 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. Maybe 50 if you really invest time and effort.

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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. And And after 30 years of Venture investing we still have a hard time articulating why. Lindsey Harper recently wrote about her experiences using Mechanical Turk to validate her startup idea.

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socalTECH

MARCH 26, 2014

Dan Rodrigues: The genesis for the idea actually started in my last business, between the first company I started--which was an Internet startup--and Kareo. I founded that with the former CTO of my first company, Kevin Smilak, who now works at Google. How did you determine this was the market to tackle, and how did you get into this?

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

It’s why my investment philosophy is called, “ the entrepreneur thesis.&#. I was meeting with a first-time CEO of a very promising young startup recently and offering my advice on what his priorities should be. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. The business leaders need to do their parts.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

I thought to myself, “OK, they were willing to F me when they thought I had no idea what I was talking about. Gee, if they treat me like this in good times I wonder how they’d treat me in bad times! You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company. No option pool shuffle. No hidden terms.

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socalTECH

JUNE 30, 2016

The idea of waiting, asking, and waiting for answers is gone. Subsequently, I built another, similar company, which I sold to Sun Microsystems, and then started a B2B, online exchange with my current CTO, and sold that to IFILM, which was subsequently acquired by Viacom. Gone are the days when your boss is setting next to you.

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socalTECH

MARCH 31, 2014

I was hired to head up strategy, marketing development, and product management. That''s really where the genesis of this comes from, and we have patents around the idea of continually analyzing both structure and semistructured data from a wide variety of sources, simultaneously. That was a very successful exit for everyone involved.

Orange County 245

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Talk and time are cheap, but they need to understand that investors judge past results as a good indicator of future expectations. Show personal investment.

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InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

At CallWave, Colin was CTO, Jason was CFO and I was in charge of product marketing and customer acquisition. We wanted investment partners that understood performance marketing and what it was like to be an entrepreneur from having done it before themselves. We’re always hiring great people. We met with a ton of VC’s and angels.

Marketing 209

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Talk and time are cheap, but they need to understand that investors judge past results as a good indicator of future expectations. Show personal investment.

Startup 104

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Talk and time are cheap, but they need to understand that investors judge past results as a good indicator of future expectations. Show personal investment.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

socalTECH

JULY 23, 2009

Therese is the former CTO at SunGard Treasury Systems, and has a wealth of experience in the financial software market. They see an almost immediate payback in a month or two on the investment they make in BlackLine. I had actually retired from SunGard as CTO before starting BlackLine. I've always worked on financial systems.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Talk and time are cheap, but they need to understand that investors judge past results as a good indicator of future expectations. Show personal investment.

Tips 88

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Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 16, 2014

Back then we invested very little in design. I’d say we also invested very little in user experience. We thought we had a great idea and we wanted to see how people responded to it. I’ve spent time building a team and now we have absolutely a great cast of people. We were just trying to test our concept.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

I’m in the team centric sphere so every investment decision I make first & foremost centers on this plane. It’s my belief that through exceptional leadership you attract great teams that do more than the sum of the parts. I made an investment in a company with deep domain knowledge. ON LEADERSHIP. Now I do.&#.

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Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

► August (1) Invest in Transparency & Active Communication ► July (1) The Fear of Success ► May (2) Optimized for Speed = 30% Waste Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon Project! I setup a nice little home office for myself and started dabbling with a few ideas. We initially hired him as our in-house recruiter.

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socalTECH

MARCH 10, 2010

We spoke to Robin about the new startup, his executive team, as well as his angel investing activity here. We've also hired a tremendous set of experience career counselors, who have had colorful or substantial careers, to supply services and products to our students. Are there specific kinds of companies you've been investing in?

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