That’s why Roger Smith puts the focus of the CTO on programming for the earliest stage. What worries me a bit is how often I read that startups should hire a developer / hands-on lead developer. But often the result of a Founder hiring a developer or lead developer or even a VP engineering is a gap created between the founders and the developers. I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO

first direct, the young bank (that doesn’t use capital letters in its name), created an elegant experience by removing branches from its business model. Tags: Design Development Interview User Experienc We keep seeing that people are drawn to elegant products and web sites, but HOW do you design elegance if you weren’t born with Steve Jobs’s design eye? I

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice . Many of these businesses were what First Round Capital called FNACs (features, not companies – this acronym has always stuck with me). Broadly speaking this last trend has been healthy as it has brought an increase focus on launching products that you can test with the market and on capital efficiency.  I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0

But I would argue that you can develop relationships with many advisers, mentors and VCs that will help with introductions for no equity.  Tags: Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capita This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  Many startup companies hire advisory boards.  It’s very tempting. 

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition.  Funding is about developing a relationship over time.  Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here . You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. 

Thursday, February 19, 2009 -- Drug Development in a Capital Constrained Economy. CONNECT. See [link] (mor

If these numbers work out, then often scaling is more a question of capital. His picture provides a much richer understanding of what will be going on, but still in an understandable and measurable way. I'm not quite sure I believe the way he exactly models the value from each of these points as is shown in the following graphic, but a similar kind of model can certainly be developed. The other thing that I think he's really done well is his look at value of different marketing channels. A couple other great things – wow – I'm going to have a lot to come back to

Our call recovered and we spent the rest of the time talking about the development of their management team and their product.  But it got me thinking about how often entrepreneurs overplay their PR so I thought I’d try to offer some advice and how to play PR with VCs (or more broadly with customers or business development partners) Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice startup technology v Handling PR with VCs This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally.

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital . Many businesses that pitch to me have White Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital.  White Instead of BS’ing me he said, “we spent 18 months building out our product and a set of graphic editing tools when we realized we had developed in the wrong platform.  There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants ” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking.  It’s

Los Angeles-based CoreObjects , a provider of outsourced product development services to the venture-backed technology community, has raised $2.0M Tags: development software outsourced capital venture coreobject in a equity funding round, according to a regulatory filing by the firm today. Details on the funding have not yet been released by the company.