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.

Jeff Fluhr and his friend from school got together and created a company called StubHub which they built up and sold to eBay. high school and high school and liked to find ways of scrounging around, getting some extra dough to, you know, satisfy my appetite for, at the time, you know, various types of activities I enjoyed back then, whether they be, you know, video games or sports. But, you know, I think it wasn't until after my first real company StubHub In 2000, people had all kinds of assumptions about buying and selling tickets to events. They assumed it was illegal or

As part of doing that, I've had the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of different chief technical officers from different kinds of companies over those years. This is a private group of CTOs who are responsible for software development within their companies. They are generally the senior most person responsible for custom software development, database design, database administration, web development, I've helped organize the Los Angeles CTO Forum for almost 10 years. Yes, there are some events around particular technologies.

This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. This kind of a simple model also helps: Define the early proof points for the company. A post by Fred Wilson pointed me to Dave McClure's Startup Metrics presentation. In many cases, I can break it down into: Customer Acquisition Cost – how will you reach prospects, how will

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

Setting up an online business is a snap compared to the work involved in building a brick and mortar company. So I figured we internet companies could learn from Ann Siner, the woman who built My Sister's Closet, a chain of designer consignment stores. The company also owns, My Sister's Attic, which features home furnishings, Well Suited, which specializes in men's clothes, and Small Change, which consigns and sells recycled kids' stuff. Read on (and listen to the full program) for some of the lessons Ann learned as she built 11 stores with $11.2 million in revenue.

Torrance-based Active Storage a developer of RAID products for Apple computers, has raised a Series A funding round, the firm said Tuesday afternoon. The company--which was founded by former executives at Apple, Inc.--said The firm said its founders were responsible for Apple's Active STorage XRAID products. said the funding was led by Intel Capital, and also included Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners. Amount of the funding was not disclosed.

San Diego-based The Active Network, which operates a network of sports- and other online registration services and marketing web sites, said today that it has acquired three companies which provide hunting and fishing licensing technology. According to The Active Network, it has acquire Automated Licensing Systems, Inc, the Central Trust Bank of Missouri's Conservation Licensing Division, and its subsidiary, Outdoor Central, Inc. Financial terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed. According to The Active Network, the acquisition makes it the largest provider of hunting

Within the clean technology industry, energy and electricity generation companies took the largest amount of funding, with $1B in investments, $990M of those in solar. Southern California even beat Silicon Valley in terms of clean tech activity, with the $363.5M Ernst & Young LLP released an analysis of clean technology fundings for Q3, finding that there were $363.5M in clean technology investments in Southern California for the quarter, a significant chunk of an overall $1.6

This morning we heard from Jamie Montgomery, CEO of the venerable Montgomery & Co investment bank who is at the heart of what is going on in M&A for venture backed companies.  They have to admit that I was greatly encouraged by Jamie’s outlook for venture backed companies, which if true will be a welcome relief for our industry.  No Summary of Montgomery & Co’s views Montgomery & Co Projects Deal Volume to Grow by 167% in Just 2 Years with No End to Growth in Sight On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture