I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. 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. Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question.

So the key question is: How can I leverage my network? One Page Networking Tool One of the best things I've seen done by a person doing a search was to provide folks he knew with a one pager that roughly contained: Background - two sentences Job Sought - two sentences Company Characteristics - geography, size, industry, etc. Companies - a list of 25 companies that fit the bill. 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

The first few weeks of starting my newest company (Startup 6.0: the Rubicon Project) have reminded me of how critical it is to have the right team. It has reaffirmed every thought I have ever had about my philosophy that great companies are built by great people. To I have been absolutely amazed by what an A++ team can produce in short periods of time. To

I believe that the success-rates of all of my companies is largely due to speed being ingrained in the compan My team is sure to crack a smirk every time someone asks me what our timeline is. They smirk because they know exactly how I’m going to respond. I say, “we like to go fast, but we don’t hurry�.

b) history of success; and c) abundance of start-up companies (so if one fails there is another to jump on). willing to go work for startup companies. Will associates this with the fact that people who have great (or even bad) jobs with companies that are farther along don't want to leave. Being 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

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. At the same time, I tend to agree that there's a need for smaller financing rounds for very early stage companies that lines up with what RWW is talking about. 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

Been traveling and consulting with a bunch of early-stage and growth companies. I've somewhat fallen off the map on this blog. 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

In my observation, i have felt that there are many a startups which have a brilliant idea, a genuine team to execute that and also a good support for the product they intend to build, but still the companies fail to break even. 2- Too much Brilliance: a lot of companies fail because the market is not ready for the innovation yet and the entrepreneurs focus on their vision as opposed to what the customer wants or needs – they continue to miss the mark by listening to themselves more than listening to those who pay. 3- Confusing Execution & Effort: a very typical problem

Investors don’t want to be running companies, period. 3- A days work: Being a professional investor is a lot of work – I have found that the entrepreneurs often feel VC’s are on the golf courses a lot and are being aloof and unavailable and not really busy – on the contrary, between talking to hundreds of entrepreneurs to identify the right deal that fits their portfolio and performing due diligence to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the fund, meeting with lots of service provider to ensure that they have solid relationships that secure deal referrals, spending time with

In 2007, the business was sold to eBay for $310 million. Jeff Fluhr and his friend from school got together and created a company called StubHub which they built up and sold to eBay. But, you know, I think it wasn't until after my first real company StubHub that people, I think, thought of me in that light. So I contacted In 2000, people had all kinds of assumptions about buying and selling tickets to events. They assumed it was illegal or that they'd get ripped off or that it was a small-time business run by guys who stood outside of stadiums.