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 “Start-up Lessons.” Tags: Start-up Advice startu 8221;  If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here. In In the Beginning … This

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. ” Imagine you pour 5 years of your life into your next gig and it starts to become successful.  Would 8221;  The problem is that you’re opening yourself up to a claim by one of these people that you somehow stole their ideas.  I 8221;  If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here . In the Beginning …

This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. BCG, Bain, LEK – they’re all great), a few years at a start-up or a few years somewhere like Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple.  8221; I

I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze.  We Tags: Start-up Advic This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons Building Building companies is hard work.  I We also had facilities in Dublin, Ireland where our company was initially founded. We

I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze.  We It didn’t add up to me.  How Bad morale is the enemy of any company let alone a start up.” Because I had started reaching out to competitor CEO’s.  I This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons Building companies is hard work.  I

When I started blogging I had an idea.  I I would take all of the one-on-one conversations that I have with entrepreneurs from the things I’ve learned and just write them up for anybody to read.  This This is advice that I end up giving ALL THE TIME and every CEO of a company I’m involved with will have heard this from me. (also, File this under entrepreneurial advice I

Elephants, Deer and Rabbits – Some thoughts on start-up segmentation When you start your company the very first question you need to ask yourself is which kind of customers do you want to serve.  Many Many start-ups (and even growth firms) lack this discipline and they therefore serve customers off all sizes.   This post is part of my series “ Startup Lessons ” Nearly all of the mistakes I made at my first company I fixed by the time of my second company.  This

Francisco Dao came up with the idea of letting 10 companies that weren’t selected for Twiistup to do a presentation the night before to a group of people and let the audience pick one company to win the final slot at Twiistup.  I I’ll put up the video when they post it on their website. Many of them have their iPhones and laptops Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential

At your stage of development do you really think a shit-hot VP Sales is going to join you to head up sales?  hiring / training / motivating staff, setting up sales compensation programs, implement ing and enforcing a sales policy) are not consistent with the skills you need in your company at this stage. So we were starting to become a real business.  Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class This is part of my ongoing posts on  Startup Advice .