SoCal CTO
DECEMBER 1, 2007
I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question. I also found this interesting graphic of the changing needs around the CTO role in different size/type companies that somewhat echoes my experience. ( Roger Smith ) This helps explain where I normally play.
Frank Addante
MAY 24, 2007
OK, as I eluded to in my previous post, I have decided to take the plunge, yet again, and start another company. So, I am on to Startup 6.0. This one is so new, we don't even have an official company name, yet. So, we decided to code name it "the Rubicon Project". Rubicon is a popular idiom that means to "go past the point of no return". The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has come to represent.
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SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 25, 2007
For some reason over the past week, I've been asked by three different people I know about job opportunities that might fit them. Since, I've given them the same advice, I thought it was worth putting in my blog. I personally believe that the best way to hire, find partners, and find a job is through a network. So the key question is: How can I leverage my network?
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 2, 2007
I had already written about OpenSocial ( OpenSocial and Facebook as Platforms) and frankly I was hoping for a lot more in the announcements and APIs. I only have a cursory understanding of OpenSocial from reading various posts and from crawling through the API definitions, but it appears that OpenSocial has a long way to go before it's going to be useful for several of the applications we are working on.
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SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 31, 2007
We finally are starting to hear what Google's anticipated alternative to Facebook as a platform. If you've talked to me in the past few months, you probably know that this is something I've been grappling with across a variety of projects/domains. I've talked about this issue in: Facebook Platform and Facebook as a Learning Platform. With Google's entry, there's a nice alternative to Facebook and the key word is "open.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 27, 2007
I was on a panel yesterday at StartupLA. The event was a good event and I ran into a few folks that I hadn't seen in a while and meet a few new people. One thing that was interesting is that I'm finally starting to run into folks in Los Angeles who run in technology circles and who have blogs. This is something that I've been having a hard time finding.
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SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 23, 2007
I went to an event by Amazon on their Amazon Web Services in Santa Monica today. The focus was S3 - storage service, EC2 - their compute cloud, their queuing system, and their flexible payment system. The S3 system is not a transactional object system, it's for larger objects, larger updates. The EC2 is very similar to having a Linux box in a colocation facility.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 17, 2007
On Ben Kuo's blog, he posted about Entrepreneurs in Southern California and pointed to a post by Will Johnson, a Southern California entrepreneur and blogger. Will's post talks about lack of interest in working for startups here in Southern California, saying: we probably’d don’t have the: a) same support infrastructure (meet-ups, networking events, etc.); b) history of success; and c) abundance of start-up companies (so if one fails there is another to jump on).
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 7, 2007
I've been reading or hearing quite a bit about how startups these days don't take nearly as much capital to create as they used to. What used to cost $1M now takes $100K. If that's actually true, then it creates New Rules Of Technology VC. In this post RWW talks about some of the new kind of approaches to funding: Y Combinator is creating tech companies with a tiny (10-20K) seed investment; Charles River Ventures started a Quick start program; Jeff Clavier launched a 12M fund for tech startups.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
Found this through Ben Kuo's blog: Media Matchmaker: autopsy of a failed startup from the Frank Peters show. Good stuff! It's worth hearing Betsy and then hearing the investors take on execution (roughly 45 minute mark). Quite a contrast. We had talked to them when they were getting started. Sounds like its good we didn't end up working with them. Still I think the concept is fantastic if the model can be figured out to make it work.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 13, 2007
I've been remiss in posting to this blog. Very busy on a couple interesting start-ups. More on them in a couple months. In any case, I went by Lunch 2.0 in Santa Monica last Friday. It was way too crowded (250 people in a tiny space). But saw a few folks I hadn't seen in a while and connected with a couple of new people. I saw that Ben Kuo wrote about it: More networking events His comment that the turn-out suggested that there likely would be more of these is probably true.
SoCal CTO
JULY 12, 2007
Interesting attempt to create a start-up over the course of a weekend. They failed to get it done in time and they make it sound like they are surprised that it might take longer than a day of programming to build something. It's funny how this expectation around start-ups persists that things can magically be built much, much faster. They also ignored that a large group of developers can't necessarily build something much faster than a small group.
SoCal CTO
MAY 1, 2007
I've worked with several businesses that were essentially based on driving traffic via search engine optimization (SEO). There are a wide variety of techniques that can be used, but getting high rankings is not easy and highly volatile. I just saw a Forbes article talking about Google Hell - getting placed in the secondary index. Bottom line - if you are basing your business on high rankings via organic search, there's pretty incredible risk.
SoCal CTO
APRIL 20, 2007
I've somewhat fallen off the map on this blog. Been traveling and consulting with a bunch of early-stage and growth companies. Really fun stuff these days. One of my recent fun experiences was doing a presentation at Harvard Business School (HBS) on the implications of Web 2.0 type tools (Blogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, RSS, RSS Readers) on corporate learning and someone like HBS.
SoCal CTO
JUNE 19, 2007
From Ask the VC - What are typical compensation numbers?
Frank Addante
DECEMBER 26, 2007
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? The Internet is quickly turning into a mutli-media platform, giving businesses the opportunity to express themselves in ways that were never possible before. Personality is now possible. That is, giving a personality to your business, something that is very hard to do with only text on a website.
Frank Addante
DECEMBER 26, 2007
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? The Internet is quickly turning into a mutli-media platform, giving businesses the opportunity to express themselves in ways that were never possible before. Personality is now possible. That is, giving a personality to your business, something that is very hard to do with only text on a website.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 29, 2007
People always ask me what I mean when I say hire "great athletes" versus "great resumes". I'm not a big fan of cliches. So, when I say it, I mean it. Let me explain.My team: what they were doing before the Rubicon Project.Casey: Talent productionChristen*: Liberian refugee camp volunteer, opiate treatment center research assistantJeannette: Movie producer, commercial real estate.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 29, 2007
People always ask me what I mean when I say hire "great athletes" versus "great resumes". I'm not a big fan of cliches. So, when I say it, I mean it. Let me explain. My team: what they were doing before the Rubicon Project. Casey: Talent production Christen*: Liberian refugee camp volunteer, opiate treatment center research assistant Jeannette: Movie producer, commercial real estate.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 15, 2007
Yesterday, we announced the results from our beta launch here at the Rubicon Project. (read announcement here) Our original plan was to launch our beta in January of 2008. We hoped to get 500 websites signed up between January and April of next year. We launched early, on October 8, and in the very first day over 500 website publishers signed up. In the first month, we had over 1100 sign ups.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 15, 2007
Yesterday, we announced the results from our beta launch here at the Rubicon Project. (read announcement here). Our original plan was to launch our beta in January of 2008. We hoped to get 500 websites signed up between January and April of next year. We launched early, on October 8, and in the very first day over 500 website publishers signed up. In the first month, we had over 1100 sign.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 9, 2007
I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last post. Things have been going absolutely crazy for us over here at the Rubicon Project. We've been bringing more and more users live onto our system daily and trying to grow the team to keep up with the increasing demand (more on that later).We just got back from ad:tech NY. As I mentioned before, we launched our beta much earlier than we.
Frank Addante
NOVEMBER 9, 2007
I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last post. Things have been going absolutely crazy for us over here at the Rubicon Project. We've been bringing more and more users live onto our system daily and trying to grow the team to keep up with the increasing demand (more on that later). We just got back from ad:tech NY. As I mentioned before, we launched our beta much earlier than we.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 18, 2007
I've gotta run into a board meeting. But, I wanted to write a quick post about our announcement this morning. As I mentioned in my previous post (What to do when hit by a tidal wave?), we were swamped with beta sign-ups from our site launch last week. We weren't prepared for such an overwhelming response. So, we were trying to figure out how to manage all of the sign-ups.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 18, 2007
I've gotta run into a board meeting. But, I wanted to write a quick post about our announcement this morning. As I mentioned in my previous post (What to do when hit by a tidal wave?), we were swamped with beta sign-ups from our site launch last week. We weren't prepared for such an overwhelming response. So, we were trying to figure out how to manage all of the sign-ups.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 15, 2007
We've all heard the term "we wear many hats," especially in startup companies. That's exactly how our team at the Rubicon Project has been operating. To date, our focus has been on developing a great product. After our beta invitation site launched last week, as I mentioned in my previous post, we received an absolutely overwhelming number of sign-ups.Developing a product, getting feedback and.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 15, 2007
We've all heard the term "we wear many hats," especially in startup companies. That's exactly how our team at the Rubicon Project has been operating. To date, our focus has been on developing a great product. After our beta invitation site launched last week, as I mentioned in my previous post, we received an absolutely overwhelming number of sign-ups.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 10, 2007
My blackberry broke. Salesforce.com maxed out. 1500 emails flooded my inbox. On Monday, we announced our private beta invitation site. We spent the entire weekend putting the finishing touches on the site. We tried to anticipate everything that could go wrong with the launch. We expected positive results, however, we had no idea that we would get slammed with the number of sign-ups that we.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 10, 2007
My blackberry broke. Salesforce.com maxed out. 1500 emails flooded my inbox. On Monday, we announced our private beta invitation site. We spent the entire weekend putting the finishing touches on the site. We tried to anticipate everything that could go wrong with the launch. We expected positive results, however, we had no idea that we would get slammed with the number of sign-ups that we.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 7, 2007
Things have been a little crazy (good crazy) since last Monday’s funding announcement. I wasn’t prepared for all the activity that followed. We had thousands of visitors hit our website in anticipation of our beta and received tons of calls from potential partners, press and investors. I still can’t believe the overwhelming response! Lesson learned: always stay on your toes because you never.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 7, 2007
Things have been a little crazy (good crazy) since last Monday’s funding announcement. I wasn’t prepared for all the activity that followed. We had thousands of visitors hit our website in anticipation of our beta and received tons of calls from potential partners, press and investors. I still can’t believe the overwhelming response! Lesson learned: always stay on your toes because you never.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 1, 2007
OK, I know I haven't posted in a while but, I'm hoping I can make it up to you with a change that I am making in the style of this blog. (By the way, thank you to all of you that I have sent emails letting me know that you miss my regular posts, it keeps me motivated to keep writing.) The reason that I haven't posted in a while is because we're preparing to finally start talking about what we.
Frank Addante
OCTOBER 1, 2007
OK, I know I haven't posted in a while but, I'm hoping I can make it up to you with a change that I am making in the style of this blog. (By the way, thank you to all of you that I have sent emails letting me know that you miss my regular posts, it keeps me motivated to keep writing.) The reason that I haven't posted in a while is because we're preparing to finally start talking about what we.
Frank Addante
AUGUST 27, 2007
About Frank Addante > (from the Silicon Valley Business Journal) Twitter Updates follow me on Twitter Blog Archive ► 2010 (2) ► June (1) Part II: Optimized for Profitability ► February (1) Get Out of the Office! ► 2009 (3) ► May (1) A Tour of the Rubicon Project Headquarters ► April (1) "Pay it Forward" Event for Students & Aspiring Ent. ► February (1) Building and Developing an A++ Team ► 2008 (14) ► December (1) Develop a Cult
Frank Addante
AUGUST 27, 2007
Startups are emotional roller coasters. It is very, very hard to remain positive 100% of the time. It takes effort, it takes commitment. It is unnatural to be positive 100% of the time. But, being positive is powerful. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. It is easy to let fear overcome you. It’s easy to worry. It’s easy to focus on inefficiencies.
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