I generally am working as an acting CTO for about 3-4 start-ups or other companies at any one time. Most often I'm being brought in the early stage, Start-up or Expansion (as the company looks at new product lines). My focus in this post is on the Early and Start-up stages - expansion is more of a consulting, focused project role and it acts different. I was just talking with someone who asked me to define how that could work and what they meant. Great question.

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  I In these many exchanges similar questions crop up. Either you’re not a good leader and he shouldn’t be investing at all, or he has no clue what it takes to build a startup.” I learned a lot about how to set goals, manage projects, deal with competing personalities and, importantly, manage “up.” Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings) I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully.  I

In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up . I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be. Most often at the earliest point in the life of a startup, the dominant need is certainly to produce product to get something in the market, get funding, etc. I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies.

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. Mine started this way … TechCrunch ran my article yesterday as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog.  This This is a slightly longer version and also has an update at the end.

For example, if you click on Startup , you find: => The most recent posts, announcements and web pages on the top of the page that relate to Startups. => The best (according to social signals across the network) content below that such as: Acting CTO Role in a Start-up The DNA of an A++ Team Startup Delta Force… => The keywords on the left are ordered according to their relationship to the current term. So you can see that Entrepreneur (60) LinkedIn (15) Metrics (16) SEO (15) Company (141) are all considered highly relevant

In March 2007,  when Pownce launched, Twitter didn't have much of a head start. think, if I were to do a new start up or a different company, I would pick it in an area where there wasn’t such good competition, determined competition. think there is definitely different levels of start ups and Twitter was definitely (laughs) a good start up, and it's really hard to compete or be compared to. We talked about more than Pownce and Twitter in this interview. Leah Culver is a developer who launched many projects.

[Update] I’m revisiting this post given the current state of the start-up environment. Brooks and I have evolved our strategy a few times since we started working together on The Graph - all while maintain our big vision.  The key is to not get to hung up on the product that will solve the problem you set out to solve.  In today’s world, it is more critical than ever to understand where your industry/category stands. When the VCs and young devs where creating web apps at an unbelievable clip proliferation was the name of the game.

Twiistup 7 talks, interviews and startup pitches!  TechZulu We were able to capture every talk and every startup pitch for your viewing pleasure.  Twiistup Twiistup has been a great place for startups to get their name out there and we love giving them that extra boost from just offline to online. Dave McClure - Startup metrics for pirates The moment you all have been waiting for has finally arrive.....Twiistup TechZulu was the official media sponsor for this year as we have been for the past few years now.  We

I continue to hear the same excuses over and over from start-up online video publishers about their failure to generate sufficient CPMs (Avg. $.25 2) What metrics are you using to sell and measure video engagement for your advertisers? 25 cents to $1) to survive as a profitable business. Should the blame be directed

The fund--started by Brian Garrett and Rick Smith --has been focused on digital media investments, and so far has made investments in six companies. The fund is just celebrated its first year in business, so we thought we'd catch up with Brian to hear more about what the firm is investing in, the challenges of raising a venture fund in this market, plus his view on the Los Angeles venture market. Let's Let's start with Los Angeles-based Crosscut Ventures (www.crosscutventures.com) is one of the newest venture capital funds in the area, and has quietly been working on funding local companies over the last year.