Tags: Start-up Advice startup technolog This post is part of my series “ Startup Lessons ” Elephants, Deer and Rabbits – Some thoughts on start-up segmentation Nearly all of the mistakes I made at my first company I fixed by the time of my second company.  This This is the only mistake

Tags: Start-up Advice startup technolog Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class This is part of my ongoing posts on  Startup Advice .  There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find.  I’m not one of those. 

In my post, Technology Roles in Startups , I described some of the different ways I engage with startup companies such as CTO Founder , CTO , Part-Time CTO , Acting CTO , Consultant, Advisor and Advisory Board Member. I thought it was worth capturing a bit more about Advisory Roles, Advisory Boards and particularly Technology-Oriented Advisors – who are often thought of a bit different when it comes to those roles. Actually, if you look back, advisory boards came from being Technical Advisory Boards where the advisors were primarily professors, researchers, experienced practitioners

Is your business’s success going to be based on execution or technology?  Or Back in the dot-com days, competitive advantage was largely based on technology development.  For It’s probably not the technology. Technology remains a competitive advantage in many areas: life science, Or is it something in between? For example, if you wanted to build an e-commerce site in 1996, it was really hard!  Any efficiencies

Tags: Startup Advice startup technology vc venture capita This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice . I remember going to an Under the Radar conference in 2006 in the heat of the Web 2.0

We’re living in the age of modern technology and there is no way to crowdsource someone’s penis or vagina? I’ve found the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back when it comes to bridging the gap between dating and technology. Or will a dark horse technology company situated in a random brick-walled office in San Francisco finally find a way for us all to spot the weirdos before we’re on date six with them? I mean, what the hell is that about?

Fascinating article by Andrew McAfee - Technology Beats a Full House - discusses how variation in performance spread decreases over time as systems become optimized. He shows that the spreads in IT heavy industries has greater variation over the past decade. ... winners were increasingly separated from loser

I’ve worked with 30+ early-stage companies in all sorts of capacities (and spoken to many, many more), so I thought it might be worthwhile trying to classify the various ways that I’ve engaged in different technology roles in startups. Background This post partly really came about as a result of a great conversation yesterday with David Croslin a former CTO at HP who recently conducted an interesting experiment. He posted on several social networking sites the following message: If you know of a startup company that could benefit from the knowledge, experience, professional

Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capita This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here. You’ve You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks. 

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.  It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?)