tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71205561838009640882024-03-12T22:41:53.787-07:00SoCal CTO<center><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/09/startup-cto.html">Startup CTO</a> :: <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/04/startup-development.html">Startup Development</a> :: <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/04/matching.html">Matching</a> :: <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/05/los-angeles-startup-community.html">Los Angeles Startup Community</a></center>Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-7691082672002073872019-08-15T14:36:00.001-07:002019-08-15T14:49:17.707-07:00Fractional CTO<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9ftnb3qlb8dTMjye1lj6XZviun45RyF7jKPT25cunNsnwmW-2_QstdL85ykMNv0q5rliFWmB_lEQNfMfSwRyi96qCSXumjKoPyZ7hu4yX2Wq_jvrw_R2k2pMbabwCxlrEcQAsvByVJA/s1600/Fractional-CTO.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="512" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9ftnb3qlb8dTMjye1lj6XZviun45RyF7jKPT25cunNsnwmW-2_QstdL85ykMNv0q5rliFWmB_lEQNfMfSwRyi96qCSXumjKoPyZ7hu4yX2Wq_jvrw_R2k2pMbabwCxlrEcQAsvByVJA/s320/Fractional-CTO.png" width="320" /></a>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since the early 1990s, I’ve been a part of 50+ startup companies in various roles, and have informally advised 100s of other startups. Through these experiences, I’ve become increasingly convinced that early to mid-stage companies need to stop being locked into full-time executive hires (especially CTOs) and in most cases use fractional hires and/or advisors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Almost all software-enabled startups do not require a full-time CTO, and their CEO should be using a fractional CTO and/or technical advisors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I get at least one email each week from startup CEOs who are looking for a CTO. Well, let me be more specific – startup CEOs have varied specific situations, but the two most common are:
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>I’m just beginning, and I need to find a CTO to build my MVP and to help me get investment.</i></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>I hired (or partnered with) a CTO to build my early versions, and I need help because the technology is a mess.</i></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take a look at these two common situations. What do you notice? They are the before and after picture for a lot of startup CEOs who didn’t have the right people involved. The CEO who starts out looking to hire a CTO to build their MVP often turns into the startup CEO with a technology mess. Why is that?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">A full-time CTO in an early-stage company?</span></h2>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To start to answer this, let me take you back to one of my early experiences. I was an early hire at a couple of software startups in a senior software role. While my title implied executive, the reality was that there was some early strategy work but then I was quickly spending all my time being a team lead and coding. I was really good at both leading developers and coding, but my passion was the strategy. Within a month of being hired, my time was roughly 10% strategy and 90% development. </span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do I mean when I say strategy? It’s answering the following kinds of questions:</span></span><br />
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<li>What should we build to get the biggest bang for the buck?</li>
<li>How much will it cost to build what we need to build? How can I control costs, but effectively get stuff developed?</li>
<li>How can we phase development to balance cost, features, risk, etc?</li>
<li>Given likely market changes, how will we design and build so that the systems can respond to marketplace changes?</li>
<li>What technologies will we use? What existing systems will we leverage, what programming languages, software development methodologies, web application frameworks, revision control systems, etc.?</li>
<li>Other integrations? Security? Scalability? </li>
<li>Who will build it? An in-house team? Or will we outsource?</li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many more of these questions that you can find in </span><a href="https://www.socalcto.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Startup CTO or Developer</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These strategy questions are critical to ask if you want to find good answers. When I first started each of those roles, I needed to spend time upfront getting the right answers to strategic questions. But once you start to get those answers, the bulk of the time (and money) needs to be spent on getting things built. </span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In talking with a lot of fellow CTOs, they’ve had the same experience in early-stage companies. Simply put, early-stage companies don’t have a full-time CTO role. Instead, they have need for getting good answers to these strategic questions, and then they need a team lead and hands-on coder, and perhaps some number of other resources.
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before and After Mess</span></span></h2>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So let me go back to the before and after picture for the startup CEOs:</span></span><br />
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<li>Before: I’m just beginning, and I need to find a CTO to build my MVP and to help me get investment.
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<li>After: I hired a CTO to build my early versions, and I need help because the technology is a mess.</li>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The startup CEO who doesn’t get help from someone like me, and is going around saying they need to “find a CTO,” is looking to find an individual who is going to do strategy work (hence the CTO title) but is also going to be the team lead/developer. The reality is that the CEO will be unlikely to get any CTO who has good strategy skills who will also be willing to sign up to be the team lead/developer. Instead, they are highly likely to find someone who is mainly focused on development, and they will be given a title (CTO) that implies strategy knowledge and skills that they don’t have. What happens?</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Look at the “After” picture. Even if you are lucky and are able to find a developer who has good team lead and development skills, because of the lack of strategy, very likely what will be built is the wrong product, technology, and team. You are left with a “technology mess,” and will start to hear a lot about technical debt and refactoring. New technical people will talk about re-architecting or even rebuilding.</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-39058ece-7fff-296e-22fc-ae6905dce963"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where did these CEOs go wrong? They asked the wrong question at the very start. And it’s not at all obvious, because you ARE looking to find a CTO. It’s just not a full-time CTO – it’s a Fractional CTO and maybe a technical advisor or two.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let me go back to my personal journey. So it’s the midst of the dot-com boom (later to be known as the “dot-com bubble”). I’ve been in a CTO role at a couple early stage companies that turned out to really be a team lead/developer role. I’m meeting lots of startup founders who have some funding and really “need to find a CTO.” So, in 1997, I decided to shift gears and agreed to be a fractional CTO for 3 startup founders. I would do the strategy work - ask and find answers to the key questions. Then I would get the right team, technology and process in place. Basically, I am agreeing to be the CTO of all 3 of these startups, but at the same time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, to be more accurate, the work I did was staggered out. The biggest chunk of work as a fractional CTO is at the start, and then it settles down. Even with them staggered, there were some fun challenges for each. One company was an event photography business that was transitioning to delivering services online; another was an art archive software becoming a internet-enabled SaaS company. These presented some interesting strategic challenges, especially back in those days.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In each case, it worked well to be a fractional CTO. I would make sure we were building the right product and define the technology strategy. I would figure out and help find the in-house/outsourced teams. Then I’d work with them to make sure we were building the software well, and work with the rest of the business to iterate and adjust. Really, it’s what you would want from a CTO. But rather than a full-time CTO, I was doing this on a part-time basis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When does the fractional CTO role end? It varies based on the company. With eHarmony, I was the fractional CTO from concept through to when they raised $110M - a period of four years. It didn’t make sense for eHarmony to have a full-time, in-house CTO during that period of time. Once they raised $110M, then it made sense for them to have a full-time CTO and in-house development team. Until then, they needed to prove key metrics and keep burn low.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other common scenario is thinning down the role based on growing in-house talent or bringing in the right person who can bridge VPE and CTO needs. Sometimes I will take on a small consulting role to help the VPE and CEO in an on-going basis, but I won’t need to spend many hours. When this can be an in-house resource, I always feel an extra bit of pride for a successful collaboration with them to reach that state.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Review and Turnaround Fractional CTO</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the years, my Fractional CTO roles have been increasingly when organizations have an existing tech team and and some technology challenges. The executive team sees the product is struggling with bugs or performance, the tech team isn’t producing at the needed rate, and they are missing lots of deadlines. Basically some variation of “I feel like we should be doing better.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s generally a business executive who calls me, and they often start by saying they don’t really know the cause of the issues, but they also have lost confidence that the tech team can solve it on their own. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This situation sometimes occurs because early in the life of a startup, the bulk of the work is development - so it’s natural to hire or outsource for development. Often you are bringing on relatively more junior resources. And they are optimizing to get product shipped quickly. You said MVP right? It’s minimum long-term architecture in most cases. Unfortunately, the same relatively junior resources are going to be challenged when it comes time to somehow get from a messy, fast moving initial period into a more stable state that will support customers. These are some of the hardest challenges. The plane needs to keep flying and we need to change a wing. Quite often the current resources are a great part of the longer-term picture, but they lack some of the skills now required of them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of my favorite parts of being a fractional CTO is the opportunity to work with up-and-coming talent to help them learn and adapt to the new skills required as the organization and tech transitions. Many of us technical people grew up from individual contributor to various management positions, but just have not been given much help in growing our skills and knowledge along the way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So as I come into a new organization, I’m working closely with the business and team to determine what the team composition needs to be, where there are gaps, what new team members are needed. For existing team members, I enjoy rolling up my sleeves and spending time coaching and developing. For places where we need additional talent, I define positions and collaborate on recruiting, onboarding, and retention techniques. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interim Fractional CTO</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this case, a CEO will call because they just got 2-week notice from their CTO or plan to let them go very soon. It seems to be coming up more often recently, and it’s a slight variation of the turnaround situation. There’s an immediate gap created in the organization. Overall the technology team seems to be doing okay, but we don’t want to lose momentum. Maybe there’s someone who is a possible internal candidate, but who lacks some skills. There’s a question of whether that person can fill the senior-most role. Or if there’s no one internally, a fractional CTO is a great way to bridge the gap to the new CTO. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, once you get into the specific situation, there are often more issues to figure out. Quite often, the CTO leaving or getting let go is an indicator of other problems. So while you hope that an interim situation will mostly be maintaining the current situation, sometimes there are turnaround aspects. At a minimum, there’s need for defining the new CTO role, helping with recruiting, and making sure the team stays focused in the interim. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Getting Started with a Fractional CTO</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a CEO, it can be a little bit intimidating to get going with a Fractional CTO. What does the organization actually need? Is this person qualified to do the job? How will they be working with the existing/new team? What will it be like working with them?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s go through what my initial process looks like and then come back to these questions. Typically, I’m introduced to a CEO through a fellow-CEO (often past clients) or via investors. We have a couple of initial conversations to assess the situation together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it’s a brand new product build, then the questions I have are pretty much in: </span><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I want to know about the business, product, budget, key milestones, etc. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If it’s not a new product build, then I’ll still want to know those things, but I’ll also ask about:</span></div>
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<li>Key pain points for the organization
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<li>Key technical team leaders/members. Who will I be primarily working with? Are they aware of the concern and that you are looking for help? This is often a great first conversation.
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<li>Existing and planned technical team shape and composition
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<li>Product leadership</li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">From this information, I’ll be able to formulate a picture of what the organization needs. In some cases, I will talk to a CEO and realize that it’s just not very clear. In that case, I may need to have an initial meeting with a couple key players. Even this next week I’ve got meetings to a CTO and CPO that’s exactly that kind of situation. But most of the time, I have a fairly clear picture of what it would look like for me to take on the Fractional CTO role. If there’s a deeper initial technical review required, I’ll know that as well and likely will suggest some resources to help with that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From there, I will write up the initial and on-going process and work effort, will size it, and then will provide an estimate. There’s almost always more upfront cost as I get up to speed and then it thins out over time. But my philosophy is not to ever have surprises around cost, so I’m clear on it. And as a Fractional CTO, my costs will be a fraction of the cost of a full-time CTO, freeing up budget for individual contributors who are the real engine of a technical team.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s go back to the challenges that the CEO is facing as they look at potential fractional CTOs:</span></div>
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<li>What does the organization actually need?
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<li>Is this person qualified to do the job?
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<li>How will they be working with the existing/new team?
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<li>What will it be like working with them?
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">For each of these questions, the CEO should be able to get answers through our initial conversations. We get pretty deep in those conversations where we are actually working together to define aspects like how to communicate with key senior tech team members. Again, I may even have initial conversations with other team members. The CEO should also ask about prior related engagements that relate to this engagement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are a CEO, I hope that you have been at least convinced to explore this. I’m always happy to talk about this and explore what might make sense for your organization. Send an email to me (Tony Karrer): akarrer@techempower.com</span></div>
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Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-2848835024042632832018-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:002018-12-10T06:06:14.337-08:00Top CTO Challenges for 2019<a href="https://www.socaltechcentral.com/?cmd=best-badge-article&g=10&b=90&a=9340531&n=1&p=v&s=s&c=" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Southern California Tech Central Best Article" border="0" ismap="" src="https://www.socaltechcentral.com/?cmd=get-best-badge&g=10&b=90&a=9340531&n=1&p=v&s=s" title="Southern California Tech Central Best Article" /></a>The <a href="https://lactoforum.org/" target="_blank">LA CTO Forum</a> recently conducted a survey to find out what our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) members saw as their biggest challenges heading into 2019.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3nttKqmA9N0sfzWXRO6h88pgpzUCQO-F0mz-zNwoYaVpKl7Ag4b6i61QZ5mnsdMCan8BUyn4Y272ExfLPxMolXS8xBAyRM243X_1cF8h0vIPd4PzKs-kAr9PjVtuZbxKivj3uUEaL1L8/s1600/CTO-Challenges-2019.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1111" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3nttKqmA9N0sfzWXRO6h88pgpzUCQO-F0mz-zNwoYaVpKl7Ag4b6i61QZ5mnsdMCan8BUyn4Y272ExfLPxMolXS8xBAyRM243X_1cF8h0vIPd4PzKs-kAr9PjVtuZbxKivj3uUEaL1L8/s320/CTO-Challenges-2019.png" width="320" /></a>We received over 250 responses that provides a pretty good insight into the top CTO challenges.<br />
<br />
The rating scale was 1-5 with:<br />
<ol>
<li>Not a challenge</li>
<li>A small challenge</li>
<li>Somewhat a challenge</li>
<li>Definitely a challenge</li>
<li>Keeps me up at night</li>
</ol>
<br />
We provide both an Average and a Scaled Rating that gives much higher weight to 4s and 5s and discounts 1s and 2s.<br />
<div>
<br />
Here are the Top CTO Challenges for 2019 sorted based on scaled rating - biggest challenges first.</div>
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<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" dir="ltr" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; font-family: arial,sans,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; table-layout: fixed; width: 0px;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><colgroup><col width="296"></col><col width="75"></col><col width="87"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Topic"}" style="background-color: #efefef; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Challenge</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Average"}" style="background-color: #efefef; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">Average</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Scaled"}" style="background-color: #efefef; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">Scaled</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Recruiting, Hiring, Sourcing and Onboarding"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Recruiting, Hiring, Sourcing and Onboarding</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.5289256198347108}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.53</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.4762396694214876}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.48</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Appropriate Security for my Organization"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Appropriate Security for my Organization</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.4917355371900825}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.49</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.4672004132231405}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.47</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"As a tech leader, where do I spend my time"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">As a tech leader, where do I spend my time</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.446280991735537}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.45</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.4602272727272727}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.46</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Personal Career Planning"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Personal Career Planning</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.152892561983471}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.15</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.39540289256198347}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.40</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Business Metrics for me / engineering"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Business Metrics for CTOs / engineering</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.2024793388429753}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.20</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3912706611570248}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.39</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Motivation of engineering team"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Motivation of engineering team</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.2148760330578514}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.21</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.38636363636363635}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.39</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Tech Vision and Tech Roadmaps"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Tech Vision and Tech Roadmaps</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.1942148760330578}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.19</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3819731404958678}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.38</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Talent Management, Career Development of team"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Talent Management, Career Development of team</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.2355371900826446}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.24</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.38145661157024796}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.38</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Organization and Structure of engineering team"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Organization and Structure of engineering team</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.152892561983471}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.15</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3747417355371901}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.37</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Managing Technical Debt"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Managing Technical Debt</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.177685950413223}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.18</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.36389462809917356}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.36</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Executive Presence"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Executive Presence</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.0578512396694215}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.06</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.359504132231405}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.36</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Architecture Decision Making / Reviews when you are not the architect"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Architecture Decision Making / Reviews when you are not the architect</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.1074380165289255}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.11</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3512396694214876}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.35</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"How to find, explore and choose new technologies "}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">How to find, explore and choose new technologies </td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.0289256198347108}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.03</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3422004132231405}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.34</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Capacity Planning and Resource Forecasting"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Capacity Planning and Resource Forecasting</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.06198347107438}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.06</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.33910123966942146}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.34</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Testing / Test Automation"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Testing / Test Automation</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.053719008264463}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.05</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.33290289256198347}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.33</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Technical Metrics"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Technical Metrics</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.041322314049587}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">3.04</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.33264462809917356}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.33</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Relationship with CEO"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Relationship with CEO</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.8801652892561984}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.88</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.33135330578512395}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.33</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Relationship with CxO Peers (Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations)"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Relationship with CxO Peers (Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations)</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.884297520661157}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.88</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3130165289256198}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.31</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Management of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Management of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.9545454545454546}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.95</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3106921487603306}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.31</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Collaborative Decision Making"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Collaborative Decision Making</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.9545454545454546}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.95</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.3081095041322314}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.31</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Integrating Offshore, Remote and In-House Engineering"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Integrating Offshore, Remote and In-House Engineering</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.8057851239669422}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.81</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.30294421487603307}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.30</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Effective Agile Management, e.g., Flow Efficiency, Sprint Boundaries"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Effective Agile Management, e.g., Flow Efficiency, Sprint Boundaries</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.896694214876033}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.90</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.30036157024793386}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.30</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Working with Product Management"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Working with Product Management</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.8512396694214877}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.85</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.29855371900826444}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.30</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Delegation & Prioritization"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Delegation & Prioritization</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.871900826446281}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.87</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.2889979338842975}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.29</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Sourcing and Managing Remote engineers"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Sourcing and Managing Remote engineers</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.768595041322314}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.77</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.28770661157024796}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.29</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Engineering Management Team (Direct Reports)"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Engineering Management Team (Direct Reports)</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.8181818181818183}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.82</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.28047520661157027}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.28</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Sourcing and Managing Offshore engineering"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Sourcing and Managing Offshore engineering</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.62396694214876}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.62</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.26420454545454547}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.26</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Complex Technology Partnerships & Vendor Negotiation"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Complex Technology Partnerships & Vendor Negotiation</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.6818181818181817}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.68</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.24922520661157024}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.25</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"CapEx/OpEx optimization"}" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">CapEx/OpEx optimization</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2.6487603305785123}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">2.65</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="[null,2,"0.00",1]" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":0.24612603305785125}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;">0.25</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div>
It's not surprising that <span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><a href="https://www.ctouniverse.com/recruiting/" target="_blank">Recruiting</a> and <a href="https://www.ctouniverse.com/security/" target="_blank">Security</a> are at the top. I was a little more surprised by topics such as "Where do I spend my time" and Personal Career Planning near the top.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Similarly, I was surprised that "Working with Product Management" and "Effective Agile Management" were not bigger challenges for most members. These have perennially been a much bigger challenge. Maybe we CTOs are improving. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">We are looking forward to interesting sessions in 2019 on this topic. I would expect that we'll see some of these discussed on <a href="https://www.ctouniverse.com/" target="_blank">CTO Universe</a> as well.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Anything surprise you? Or something that we missed?</span></span></div>
Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-36913834323445381942017-04-25T07:27:00.002-07:002017-04-25T07:27:23.210-07:00Finding Startup Developers - First Email Contact<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is the most recent version of an all too common email inquiry from a startup founder. I've removed the two words that described the market - otherwise this is verbatim.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'm working on a start up idea in the XXX market
with my partner and we are currently looking for full stack developer to join us as a technical
co-founder. We have been reading about the LA CTO Forum and we thought it would
be a great place to find him/her.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Please let me know if you can share this
information with your members. </span></blockquote>
<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AParis_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="By Alex E. Proimos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/4199675334/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Paris Tuileries Garden Facepalm statue" height="213" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg/512px-Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg" width="320" /></a>I've written before about having an <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/09/initial-conversation-with-cto-or.html">Initial Conversation with a Potential CTO</a>. That post and <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html">How to Find Programmers for You Startup - a Field Guide</a> both lay out a lot of the tactics that will prepare a founder for important early conversations.<br />
<br />
The above email is SO BAD that I feel compelled to treat this email as a special case so maybe I can help other founders before they send this email. Or at least send them a link to this post if they have already sent something like the above and let them know what I would have wanted instead.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Homework</h3>
I don't think that this founder has looked at my blog or my background. If they had read either of the above articles or the 10 other on my blog, then they would have sent me something else. So, why should I spend time if they've not spent time?<br />
<br />
<h3>
Startup and Founder Backgrounds</h3>
This is a cold email. I don't know the individual or his partner. And I don't know anything about the business. If you want me to take you seriously, then get me interested. What background do you have? Why is this a great startup? What have you done so far? This should be your elevator pitch. Get me interested. And please include LinkedIn URLs so that I can easily find your background.<br />
<br />
Of course, this needs to be "elevator size" - 3 to 4 sentences. Otherwise, I won't get to your ask.<br />
<h3>
Think About Your Ask</h3>
Likely many startup founders, they want help getting their startup concept built. The way they expressed it "technical co-founder" is code for find someone who will work as an <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/11/equity-only-cto-and-equity-only.html">Equity Only Developer</a>. It's really hard to find and super competitive to find developers who are going to jump on a concept and build it. That's not going to be a successful outreach. <br />
<br />
Go read the above posts and you'll hopefully reframe the question and do it much better the second time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-83769590543466871362016-07-19T10:00:00.000-07:002016-07-20T14:29:56.581-07:00TechEmpower Benchmarks and the Microsoft ASP.NET Core 1.0 Performance StoryI’ve had lots of conversations with fellow CTOs about the <a href="https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/" target="_blank">TechEmpower Web Framework Benchmarks</a>. Some really appreciate the value that they bring to help them understand performance characteristics of different frameworks. Depending on the <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2016/02/what-are-technical-performance.html" target="_blank">Technical Performance Requirements</a> for your system, this could be really valuable information that is <a href="https://www.techempower.com/blog/2016/02/10/think-about-performance-before-building-a-web-application/" target="_blank">part of your framework selection process</a>. However, I’ve also had fellow CTOs tell me that they don’t find the test credible or that they don’t understand how their favorite framework doesn’t perform better. Frankly, those two statements are often correlated. But when Microsoft is talking about “huddling around the benchmark” and “only making a pull request when it’s an order of magnitude of Node.js” – I would say that the benchmarks are providing real value to the development community.<br />
<br />
Let me step back and tell a bit more of the story here.<br />
<br />
You may or may not be aware that Microsoft just <a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2016/06/27/announcing-asp-net-core-1-0/" target="_blank">announced</a> the release of ASP.NET Core 1.0: <br />
<blockquote>
Today we are excited to announce the release of ASP.NET Core 1.0! This new release is one of the most significant architectural updates we’ve done to ASP.NET. As part of this release we are making ASP.NET leaner, more modular, cross-platform, and cloud optimized. ASP.NET Core is now available, and you can start using it today by <a href="https://dot.net/core">downloading it here</a>.</blockquote>
There’s a lot to like about ASP.NET Core 1.0. It is a viable contender for all sorts of development efforts. One of the things that makes us even more excited is that Microsoft has focused on is Performance as a core attribute:<br />
<blockquote>
With a significant rewrite of the web framework, we addressed some performance issues and have set aggressive goals for the future. We’re introducing the new Kestrel web server that runs within your IIS host or behind another host process. Kestrel has been designed from the start to be the fastest .NET server available, and our engineers have recorded some benchmarks to prove it. With the backdrop of the <a href="https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r12&hw=peak&test=plaintext">standard TechEmpower Benchmarks</a>, the team used these same tests to validate the speed of Kestrel and have some impressive numbers to report.</blockquote>
Another <a href="https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/06/27/announcing-net-core-1-0/" target="_blank">announcement</a> also touts the benchmarks:<br />
<blockquote>
We used industry benchmarks for web platforms on Linux as part of the release, including the <a href="http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/">TechEmpower Benchmarks</a>. We’ve been <a href="https://github.com/aspnet/benchmarks">sharing our findings</a> as demonstrated in our own labs, starting several months ago. </blockquote>
How did Microsoft get to this kind of performance. Scott Hunter, Director of Program Management on the App Plat team at Microsoft, tells a bit of the story on the <a href="https://www.dotnetrocks.com/?show=1291" target="_blank">DotNet Rocks Podcast</a> (starting around 19:00). <br />
<blockquote>
I got a rash of customers who said to me, “Hey, we went to this TechEmpower Benchmark site. And we saw where .Net was and where other technologies are, why should we be using your stack?”<br />
…<br />
Damian said – “I’m going to build perf lab and take a look at this thing.”<br />
…<br />
In the team room, the team would be huddled around the benchmark saying, “We got another 10,000 or 50,000 or 70,000.”<br />
…<br />
would only make a pull request when it was an order of magnitude of Node.js. If I can get 2 Nodes, then I’ll do a PR. <br />
…<br />
It became this thing in the team room where people kept piling in, and it became important. Then as we started putting the numbers out there, the response was crazy. The pinnacle of the responses was … Satya [Microsoft’s CEO] got an e-mail from somebody in the Valley, which we ended up seeing at some point. The person was basically saying, “Hey, I just want to let you know that non-Microsoft and non-DotNet people down here are actually looking at the numbers that one of your teams is doing and we find them super-exciting. He said there’s chatter on Slack channels and stuff from people who not be even thinking or talking about us.” </blockquote>
The Damian mentions is Damian Edwards. You can see a talk he does on <a href="https://vimeo.com/172009499">Vimeo</a> also telling a bit of this story.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/172009499" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
I have to mention that early in the video Damian asks:<br />
<blockquote>
Who’s heard of <a href="http://www.techempower.com/" target="_blank">TechEmpower</a> – okay most people. </blockquote>
Wow, really - who's that audience?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/$image[4].png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Damian takes us through how they looked at the Benchmarks and what led them to achieving some remarkable results posted on their <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/net/intro" target="_blank">intro</a> page:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuZck3Bxou226x6ppky1hwran7xunS79dZGOHd-IgwDRaxpC3mqiKv8GJrDLGd1PhrpqKe_HVmRqUnb7aeQUHXuq1yr51YxwyCQ3Ly3pIVI3TzxzQh_oxeR_JnP8FKjtABOYmjR1XPfE/s1600/Microsoft-Performance.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuZck3Bxou226x6ppky1hwran7xunS79dZGOHd-IgwDRaxpC3mqiKv8GJrDLGd1PhrpqKe_HVmRqUnb7aeQUHXuq1yr51YxwyCQ3Ly3pIVI3TzxzQh_oxeR_JnP8FKjtABOYmjR1XPfE/s400/Microsoft-Performance.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
This is exactly the kind of thing that we were hoping at TechEmpower when we came up with the benchmarks. The fact that Microsoft made it a focus and applied resource to produce such exceptional performance is commendable, and the result is a solution that is provides tremendous value to ourselves and the developer community more broadly. <br />
<br />
Great job Microsoft! <br />
<br />
At TechEmpower, we are very happy to have been part of your journey. Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-51771295857980556082016-02-10T17:30:00.002-08:002016-02-10T17:30:11.788-08:00What are the Technical Performance Requirements for your Startup?By far the most popular post on this blog is <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html" target="_blank">32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup
Founder</a>. It was originally written in 2011 and has had amazing staying
power. While I’ve updated it a few times, it continues to get at important
questions that startup founders need to be asking. I find myself sending it to
startup founders all the time – maybe just slightly less than <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html" target="_blank">Free Startup CTO Consulting</a>. <br />
<br />
One notable gap in the 32 Questions post is Performance. Luckily, some of
the folks at <a href="http://www.techempower.com/" target="_blank">TechEmpower</a>
just posted <a href="https://www.techempower.com/blog/2016/02/10/think-about-performance-before-building-a-web-application/">Think
about Performance Before Building a Web Application</a>. It does a good job of
laying out different aspects of performance that should be thought about prior
to creating a system.<br />
<br />
I want to take a slightly different cut at the topic of performance. While
it’s a messy topic, I’m going to try to lay out some of the additional questions
that developers should be asking a Startup Founder around the performance
requirements of the application.<br />
<br />
To get us started and to grossly oversimplify performance, conceptually we
can think about the system as consisting of the following elements that I’ll
refer to throughout the post.<br />
<ul>
<li>Requests. We get a set of requests for our system to do something –
generally from users or external systems.
</li>
<li>Compute. Our system must access our data, possibly 3rd party services, do
some calculation and then get back to the user or the other system with our
response.
</li>
<li>Response. The pages or API response we provide back. </li>
</ul>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMmVXoKnq3mp70pSn6eZ_xB47aDD75nF-CryHB7VFuSAw8NemOApBHyZFNvYpxWtZOTCQJEik45v1UYHKOGTZQxpE-qocGF-BRl3Ec3rfntXwyAZ6zTPFhusQ4X3meIXwTUYyCM-auYHw/s1600/Performance.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMmVXoKnq3mp70pSn6eZ_xB47aDD75nF-CryHB7VFuSAw8NemOApBHyZFNvYpxWtZOTCQJEik45v1UYHKOGTZQxpE-qocGF-BRl3Ec3rfntXwyAZ6zTPFhusQ4X3meIXwTUYyCM-auYHw/s1600/Performance.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<h2>
Application Characteristics</h2>
Any discussion of performance starts by understanding what the software does,
how it is used, and what it interacts with. A developer should find out:<br />
<ul>
<li>What are the different types of users? What do they do?
</li>
<li>Is SEO important? – this is really another type of user – a crawler
</li>
<li>Are we providing an API to other systems? What are the characteristics of
how these are used? - again, this is like a user type.
</li>
<li>Are there any time-based operations? Overnight calculations?
</li>
<li>Are 3rd party services used? What are the characteristics of how they are
used? What are their performance characteristics?
</li>
<li>How many of each type of user are there? How many might be using the
application at the same time (concurrent users)? Will there be spikes of
concurrent usage?
</li>
<li>What data is used in the application? How big is the data set? Are there
complex aspects to the data?
</li>
<li>What computations / algorithms are part of the application? Are any of the
calculations done often? Are any of the calculations complex?
</li>
<li>Are there any aspects that have specific performance needs? For example,
are you providing a stats service that needs frequent, fast updates? </li>
</ul>
<h2>
Response Time</h2>
Once we understand the overall characteristics of the application, then we
want to drill down on some specific performance characteristics. We generally
start with response time needs because, in many ways, this is ultimately the
measure of performance. If you think about our system picture above, response
time is roughly the time it takes to get our page or API call back from the
system. <br />
<br />
It’s well documented that response time has significant business impact:<br />
<ul>
<li>An ecommerce site that makes $100,000 per day could <a href="https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/">lose up to $2.5 million in
sales every year for just a 1-second page delay</a>.
</li>
<li>It’s also necessary to note that a poor mobile website experience can <a href="https://www.zendesk.com/resources/increasing-loyalty-with-an-exceptional-customer-experience/">impact
your customers’ perception of and loyalty to your brand</a>.
</li>
<li>Google told us back in 2010 that <a href="https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.fr/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html" target="_blank">site speed was important for SEO</a>.
</li>
<li>500ms increased response time means <a href="http://glinden.blogspot.fr/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html">20% less
traffic for Google</a>,
</li>
<li>100ms increased response time <a href="http://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/">decreases
Amazon sales by 1%</a> </li>
</ul>
The impact is quite real. But as with most things in tech, the picture is
far more complicated than that. Consider two different types of systems:<br />
<ul>
<li>eCommerce or Content web site. These will have many individual web pages,
with specific URLs, optimized for SEO. Each page needs fast response time (both
time to first byte and total load time). Pages may not have much dynamic
content on the page. There may be lots of pages.
</li>
<li>Web Application such as Web Mail or a gated Social network. The content is
not used for SEO so response time characteristics may be quite different. If
the initial load time of the web application was 10 seconds but bringing up an
individual email took less than 1s that’s likely an okay characteristic.
Technically, this may open the door to a single-page application (SPA). These
often often have a relatively longer time to load and then has really good
performance once you are “in the application.” </li>
</ul>
Of course, response time is quite a bit more complex than this. You will be
looking at aspects like:<br />
<ul>
<li>Time to first byte (TTFB) vs. Load time
</li>
<li>API calls
</li>
<li>Global delivery?
</li>
<li>Mobile delivery possibly with slow connections? </li>
</ul>
As a startup founder, you need to think about the characteristics of your
solution and what you need from a response time standpoint.<br />
<h2>
Request Volume</h2>
Assuming we know what our system needs to produce (the right side of the
picture) and how fast (response time), then the next big question is really how
much? We want to find out what requests the application gets (left side of
picture) and how often these come in. This is generally turned into a Requests
per Second number.<br />
<br />
Most of the time we will start by asking about Concurrent Users – and this is
generally the number that startup founders are thinking about when they talk
about scalability. Concurrent users are the number that are on your web site or
web application at the same time. Of course we need to combine number of
concurrent users with what the users are doing in order to have more of a
picture of what this means. <br />
<br />
For example, let’s assume this is a content site. For human users, they
request a page with content, likely the content page is relatively simple, the
user reads/scans the page for a little bit, they decide to click something else
which requests a new page. This may take 10 seconds. So some quick math:<br />
<ul>
<li>Each user generates 0.1 requests per second
</li>
<li>1,000 concurrent users generate 100 requests per second </li>
</ul>
Those are really interesting numbers for a technical person. Of course, this
gets much more complicated. A developer will want to drill down on:<br />
<ul>
<li>Different types of users?
</li>
<li>Different use cases?
</li>
<li>Traffic spikes? TV Coverage? Real-time events?
</li>
<li>API Usage?
</li>
<li>Growth rates? </li>
</ul>
This will give us a clearer picture of Request Volume for different kinds of
requests that our system needs to process.<br />
<h2>
Complexity</h2>
Now we know the volume we need to satisfy coming in on the left and the
response time required on the right. The middle is what the system needs to do
in order to respond to that volume of requests within that timeframe. <br />
<br />
Developers will want to explore with a startup founder where there may be
complexity in the system. We want to do this for two reasons: (1) how complex
is the software we need to build – complexity generally means more time/cost to
build, and (2) how long will it take for the system to calculate responses. I’m
only going to focus on the second aspect – understanding complexity as it
relates to performance. And really I’m only going to scratch the surface here
as complexity is something that a startup founder and a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html" target="_blank">Technical Advisor</a> would need to explore together.<br />
<ul>
<li>Computation Complexity – What do we need to compute? What are some of the
more complex aspects of system calculation? Natural language processing?
Matching algorithms? Complex reports? Are there widely varied use cases with
different performance characteristics? Any blocking operations?
</li>
<li>Data Complexity – What data are we dealing with? How big is the data set?
What are the largest number of a single type of entity? Are there aspects that
need to be pre-computed? Any time series data? Any logging/auditing data?
</li>
<li>3rd Party System Complexity – What are the characteristics of the 3rd party
systems? What will happen when they are slow or non-responsive? What happens
when they return poor quality results? </li>
</ul>
<h2>
Last Thoughts</h2>
<br />
Yikes, that turned into a lot more than I was originally thinking as I
started this post. Hopefully the core model makes sense. As a startup founder
you need to think about the characteristics of your application and then think
about the Volume, Complexity and Response Time requirements. For some
applications, it will be relatively straight forward to think about the
technical performance requirements for your startup. However, in many cases,
this is a place where you really should be talking with a technical advisor or
reaching out to get <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html" target="_blank">Free Startup CTO Consulting</a> in order to understand what you
need.Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-20226106822609123052015-03-02T06:16:00.001-08:002015-03-02T06:17:53.582-08:00Los Angeles CTO / VP Engineering Job Searches<p>As the organizer of the <a href="http://www.lactoforum.org" target="_blank">LA CTO Forum</a>, I get lots of inquiries by job seekers and people looking for CTO / VP Engineering talent.  </p> <p>I’ve written quite a bit about aspects of this topic, especially from the perspective of startup founders looking for talent – you can find these in: <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/09/startup-cto.html" target="_blank">Startup CTO</a>.  This includes links to <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/04/cto-salary-and-equity-trends-2009-2011.html">CTO Salary and Equity Trends,</a> <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/technology-roles-in-startups.html">Technology Roles in Startups</a>, <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/09/initial-conversation-with-cto-or.html">Initial Conversation with a CTO or Technical Advisor</a>, <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/03/finding-technical-cofounder-for-your.html">Finding a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup</a>, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/04/hiring-cto-for-your-startup.html">Hiring a CTO for Your Startup</a> and many others.</p> <p>What I’ve not written as much about is what to do if you are a CTO looking for your next opportunity – especially in Los Angeles.  I have quite a few conversations like this and am having one via email right now, so it inspired me to put it in a post instead.</p> <h1>Targeting Your Job Search</h1> <p>The best starting place is to visit my post on: <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2007/09/networking-to-job-practical-advice.html" target="_blank">One Page Job Networking Tool</a>.  It suggests that you start by creating a one pager that contains:</p> <ul> <li>Background - two sentences </li> <li>Job Sought - two sentences Company </li> <li>Characteristics - geography, size, industry, etc. </li> <li>Companies - a list of 25 companies that fit the bill. </li> </ul> <p>This tool forces you to focus on the specifics of who you are really targeting.  When I get into a conversation with a CTO looking for their next role, they really need to know the stage of the company (pre-seed, seed, A, B, growth, pre-exit, public/on-going), size of the company – especially numbers of technical resources, geography, etc.  Ideally, they’ve thought through all of these characteristics.  It’s a good idea to start with a fairly narrow definition.</p> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-ctb218K2g_E/VPRwt5reVfI/AAAAAAAABpQ/Na1J_tjtNC4/s1600-h/formds%25255B5%25255D.png"><img title="formds" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="formds" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-GV_R9Gw4RWc/VPRwucsM3OI/AAAAAAAABpU/6NWvW0fduZw/formds_thumb%25255B3%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="380" align="right" height="257" /></a>If you are going after venture-backed startups, then certainly look at <a href="http://www.socaltech.com/" target="_blank">socaltech.com</a> and <a href="http://formds.com/locales/los-angeles" target="_blank">formds</a>.  This will give you a pretty good initial list of companies that have raised capital in the geography.  Yes, this is going to take a while, but you need to spend the time to figure out who you are really targeting.  You should spend time looking at the bios and titles of the people in the company.  That is likely the best indicator of whether they might need a new senior technical leader.  Of course, just because a CTO or VPE is listed doesn’t mean it’s working well.</p> <p>Armed with your networking tool, now it’s time to get it out to all the people you know.  You are looking both for introductions to the targets you know about, but even more importantly finding out who might have needs that you don’t know about.</p> <p>What you should be gathering from this is that looking for a job is more of a sales process than anything else and there are no easy answers.  You need to start by figuring out who your suspects are.  How could you search and identify the companies that would hire you?  And then how do you move them through your pipeline?</p> <h1>Executive Recruiters</h1> <p>CTO job seekers often ask me for introductions to executive recruiters.  There are some really good executive recruiters here in Los Angeles that cover most of the CTO job searches especially for venture-backed startups.  Top of mind and in no particular order:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.venturesearchllc.com/" target="_blank">Jim Jonassen</a> </li> <li><a href="http://rivierapartners.com/meet-partner-eric-larson/" target="_blank">Eric Larson</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.dynamicsynergy.com/bio.htm" target="_blank">Mark Landay</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.safirepartners.com/" target="_blank">Todd Gitlin</a> </li> </ul> <p>Note: if I’m missing someone, please let me know.</p> <p>My experience has been that executive recruiters would really like to know you if you fit the profile of a current search.  Otherwise, they are not going to spend time with you.  If you think about it, that makes sense.  They are going to search out candidates when the time comes. </p> <p>So, the bottom line these days is that I’m not doing these introductions.  If you have other thoughts on this topic, please comment.</p> <p> </p> <h1>VCs / Investors</h1> <p>Another common inquiry is, “Should I get introduced to VCs or other Investors who might need help in their portfolio companies?”  My general answer is “no.”  Much for the same reason as with executive recruiters.  The chance that you fit a specific need is relatively small.  Since they don’t know you already, it’s probably not worth their time or yours.</p> <p>That said, if you already have a relationship with a VC, letting them know you are on the market is a good idea.  Actually, you should use your one-page networking document with them so they can likely help even outside their portfolio.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-30825333427525160602014-05-13T14:44:00.001-07:002014-05-13T14:44:44.027-07:00What Startup Advisors Do I Need?<p>Bob Dorf just published a post <a href="http://dorfonstartups.com/2014/05/13/where-are-the-hackers-solving-the-founder-tech-gap/" target="_blank">Where are the Hackers?  Solving the Founder-Tech Gap</a> that came out of some fun conversations that Bob and I have been having.  A large part of this conversation is what kinds of advisors startups should be looking for.</p> <p>A little while ago, I suggested that <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Every Web/Mobile Startup Should Have a Technical Advisor</a>.  The conversation with Bob was about what the composition of advisors should look like.  We both felt that most startups are not taking a very systematic approach to defining with they need in terms of advisors.</p> <blockquote> <p>Here’s the other aspect that both Tony and I preach: <strong>get help.</strong> You can’t afford and don’t want to hire a full-time CTO or architect. But, advisors, coaches, and mentors can often fill the bill. Getting someone who’s fully employed somewhere else to work with you on a limited basis to help close the gap is hugely important for the non-technical founder.</p> </blockquote> <p>While Bob’s post focuses on <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/technology-advisor.html">Technology Advisors</a> and the <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/05/startup-founder-developer-gap.html">Startup Founder Developer Gap</a>, we also discussed advisors more broadly.  I wanted to capture some of the broader conversation.</p> <h3>Formal vs. Informal Advisors</h3> <p>In many cases, you can get a couple coffee or beer meetings with advisors without ever formally engaging them as an advisor.  For me, if I can help you within a couple hours <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a>, I’m happy to do that and I don’t expect compensation or equity for that.  It’s not until it gets beyond the initial conversation or two that a formal relationship would be discussed.</p> <p>There are a lot of people in the startup ecosystem that are happy to do this.  In creating <a href="http://mentornight.com/" target="_blank">Mentor Night</a>, I’ve been happy to hear how giving most people are.  If you present a mentor with an interesting startup challenge in a space where they have experience or expertise, the mentors are quite willing to spend a few hours to help the founder.  And it’s way more fun when you have other interesting people in the room trying to also help.</p> <p>Formal relationships make sense once you get beyond the informal stage, and it’s clear that there’s on-going need.  I recommend looking at the <a href="http://fi.co/contents/206#" target="_blank">Founder’s Institute Founder Advisor Standard Template (FAST) Agreement</a> as a template for this relationship.  Of course, you will want to work out the specifics of how you plan to work together with the advisor once it becomes more formal and adjust accordingly.</p> <p>In some cases, Founders are building an Advisory Board with the purpose of padding their investor deck.  Investors discount this.  And it can hurt you if it’s purely cosmetic.  They may know some of your advisors and make a call after you meet with the investor.   </p> <h3>Connected Advisors?</h3> <p>I talk to many startup founders who select advisors in order to tap into their connections.  I’m not the biggest fan of this personally.  I side more with Mark Suster who <a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/10/12/should-your-startup-have-an-advisory-board/" target="_blank">says</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>“advisory boards are an expensive equity proposition for merely introductions.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, you want connected individuals, but you often find that there are a few introductions that come easily and once those are exhausted, the value drops rather fast.</p> <h3>Domain Experts and Functional Advisors </h3> <p>Domain Experts have deep knowledge of your particular domain or aspect of the domain.  Maybe it’s knowledge of the players and dynamics of the mobile ad ecosystem.  </p> <p>Functional Advisors come in with expertise in a particular area where you may need a second set of eyes.  This might be technology, marketing, sales, operations, international expansion, etc.  </p> <p>Shafqat Islam looks at how he defined his <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/shafqatislam/2013/08/29/creating-your-startups-board-of-advisors/" target="_blank">Board of Advisors for NewsCred</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>We spent a lot of time thinking about the exact roles and responsibilities for our advisory board. In that time I realized that we sought out very specific functions and had clear expectations.</p> </blockquote> <p>Through this he defined aspects like “deep dives into our marketing strategy” and “product feedback and product strategy.”</p> <p>This is a great way to go through and look at where you might have gaps and figure out what kinds of advisors you might want to approach for informal advice and then possibly formal advisory relationships.</p> <p>In Bob’s post, he tells startup founders to get smart on product design, software architecture and development process.  That’s great advice.  But if the founder is just learning about these things, then those are gaps where getting advisors likely make sense.</p> <h3>Additional Thoughts on Advisors</h3> <p>Some additional random thoughts on Advisors and links to more information:</p> <ul> <li>Find advisors who say, “I don’t know but let me look for someone who does.”  </li> <li>Know how to navigate your <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/09/initial-conversation-with-cto-or.html" target="_blank">Initial Conversation with a CTO or Technical Advisor</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/05/11/advisors-101-for-startup-founders/" target="_blank">Advisors 101 for Startups</a></li> <li><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors" target="_blank">Everything You Wanted to Know About Startup Advisors Part 1</a></li> <li><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors-part-2" target="_blank">Everything You Wanted to Know About Startup Advisors Part 2</a></li> <li><a href="http://scalablestartup.berkeley.edu/2013/09/10/five-things-to-consider-when-selecting-advisors-for-your-startup/" target="_blank">Five Things to Consider When Selecting Advisors for your Startup</a></li> <li><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/01/26/why-assemble-an-advisory-board/" target="_blank">Why assemble an advisory board?</a></li> <li><a href="http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/92/Startups-and-Advisory-Board-Members.aspx">Startups and Advisory Board Members</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/the-importance-of-advisory-boards-for-startup-ceos/2008/02/14/">The Importance of Advisory Boards for Startup CEOs</a> </li> <li><a href="http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2010/02/critical-considerations-for-startup.html">Critical Considerations for a Startup Advisory Board</a></li> </ul> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-45214635250378962672014-04-28T09:18:00.000-07:002014-04-28T09:18:00.020-07:00Working with Developers<p>There was a lot of passion in the room last week when I presented Working with Developers at the <a href="http://stubbsalderton.com/preccelerator/" target="_blank">Stubbs Precellerator</a>.  I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers.  So I promised that I would provide a follow-up after the session.  This is that follow-up and hopefully it’s useful to people outside of the session as well.</p> <h3>Challenges</h3> <p>I started by asking the founders in the room to tell me some of the challenges they have working with developers.  Here are some of the issues that were mentioned:</p> <ul> <li>I just want the cost, timeline and impact.  But my developers want to go into way too much detail. </li> <li>I’m a long way into development and I’m 90% done and we are having issues getting it completed </li> <li>Developers like to over engineer.  They often don’t take into account the actual business need.  In fact, they often don’t really understand the business. </li> <li>Developers (and Founders) are challenged to know how much is okay in terms of bugs. </li> <li>I’m challenged getting developers to work with me when I can’t pay them market wages. </li> <li>Developers like to do things their way even when it doesn’t meet the needs of the business. </li> <li>Developers don’t communicate well </li> </ul> <p>We likely could have gone on from there, but I had thought this would be more fun, instead it seemed to be poking a sore spot and I could see the pitch forks coming out. </p> <p>Let me come back to these at the end of this post.</p> <h3>Developer Motivators and Demotivators</h3> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-XBn1fXjtRLw/U10uKQDf_aI/AAAAAAAABk8/4uFetY5Yp2s/s1600-h/Jim_Parsons_Comic_Con3.jpg"><img title="Jim_Parsons_Comic_Con" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="Jim_Parsons_Comic_Con" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-41TDkYA6CPs/U10uK4m6d5I/AAAAAAAABlE/HNb9bg8ONLE/Jim_Parsons_Comic_Con_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800" width="260" align="right" height="196" /></a>If you’ve not watched the Big Bang Theory, then let me give you some homework.  Go watch a few episodes.  Being a geek myself, the writers of this show hit pretty close to home.  It may give non-technical founders a bit more insight into working styles when it comes to developers.  In particular, pay attention to Sheldon Cooper (pictured).  And keep in mind that developers consider you as weird as you may consider them:</p> <blockquote> <p>“I'm sorry penny. But in this room you're the one who's peculiar.” – Sheldon Cooper</p> </blockquote> <p>Developers want:</p> <ul> <li>To solve something interesting, i.e., it’s an interesting technical problem </li> <li>To have what they build get used and have impact </li> <li>Learn from building it, ideally learning new skills and technologies </li> <li>Praise for delivery, solving a technical issue </li> <li>Have fun – but that’s often things like getting pizza delivered, time out for video games, celebrating a new release </li> </ul> <p>Developers do not like:</p> <ul> <li>Salespeople / Being Sold – talk to them without hyperbole.  Just to the facts.  </li> <li>Time Wasters - Don't talk too much.  Stay on point.  Only go social when they go social.  </li> <li>Pretending to know more than you know and not knowing enough.  Please do your homework so you at least know the basics.  But don’t pretend you know anything more than you do.  If you’ve ever seen an athlete use a big word in a slightly wrong way, that’s how you sound when you use technical language and you don’t quite know what it means. </li> <li>Changing Your Mind.  If something changes in the business and it requires change, then you will need to cushion the developer as much as you can.  I’d first ask if you REALLY need to make the change.  It is hugely demotivating to be putting your heart-and-soul into one set of functionality only to have it change and basically throw away a bunch of work. </li> <li>Estimating Cost – it takes a lot of work to do a reasonable estimate of cost.  The developer should be breaking out each individual piece of functionality and then coming up with a range of effort for the elements of that functionality.  It’s generally a good idea to go through each of these line items to try to better understand what’s involved, especially for the ones that are bigger or that don’t seem to line up with your understanding of complexity.  Do keep in mind that this is hard work for a developer.  And since they then get locked into whatever they come up with as an estimate, it’s also scary.  Have they considered everything?  If there’s some issue they didn’t think about are they going to be beat up about it?  </li> <li>Re-estimating – if estimating is something they don’t like, then having to re-estimate costs based on a constantly changing target is brutal.  Don’t do this to a developer or they will hate you. </li> <li>Setting the Deadline or using the works “Just,” “Easy,” or “Everyone does this.”  - It’s tough on a developer to explain why it takes work to get something to be built.  Adding pressure to this conversation makes it tougher.  It is better for them to come up with estimates on their own and have you go through to understand those estimates in a neutral way.  Do not ever say, “Here’s what we need and we need it by X date.”  You either need to be willing to take stuff out to get it down to something to hit the deadline, or you need to live with the date that arises from the estimate.  You also should never say something like, “We just need to add X.”  It implies that it’s something really easy to do.  “I just need you for a few hours to help me move this weekend.”   </li> <li>Poor machine, screen, connection, chair.  If your developers have a better machine, screen, internet connection, or chair at home than they do in the office, then there’s a problem.  As compared to the cost of a developer, these are relatively inexpensive items. </li> </ul> <h3>Founder Developer Gap</h3> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-kZ2LMTwrdJ8/U10uLhTmKoI/AAAAAAAABlM/BjSpYCZJXNg/s1600-h/image5.png"><img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Gy0RIaXfPxE/U10uNNhTRAI/AAAAAAAABlU/a-sn88QUd8s/image_thumb3.png?imgmax=800" width="660" height="467" /></a></p> <p>The challenge for many non-technical founders is that they primarily need a lot of development to happen.  I.e., they need a developer more than they need a CTO.  What happens when you have a really good developer is that a gap exists where you may not ask the right questions to specify the right system, consider appropriate 3rd party technologies, etc.</p> <p>This is something I’ve explored several times already in my blog:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/05/startup-founder-developer-gap.html" target="_blank">Startup Founder Developer Gap</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html" target="_blank">Startup CTO or Developer</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html" target="_blank">Technical Advisors – Why Every Startup Needs Them</a> </li> </ul> <p>Bottom line - for most startups, what they really need is a technical advisor or part-time CTO along with some development resources.</p> <h3>Other Topics Covered</h3> <p>I also covered topics that are covered more thoroughly in the following posts:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html" target="_blank">Document Your MVP for a Developer</a>. </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html" target="_blank">How to Hunt Programmers</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/03/finding-technical-cofounder-for-your.html" target="_blank">Finding a Technical Cofounder</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html">Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/06/choosing-programming-language-and.html">Choosing a Programming Language and Framework for Your Startup</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/poor-software-developers-pull-plug.html">Poor Software Developers - Pull the Plug Early</a><!--EndFragment--> </li> </ul> <p>Some additional posts that may be of value:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/09/initial-conversation-with-cto-or.html" target="_blank">Initial Conversation with a Technical Advisor</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/02/building-your-mvp-as-non-technical.html">Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Startup Founder</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html">Document Your MVP for a Developer</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-development-do-your.html">Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-developers.html">Startup Software Developers</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/09/equity-for-early-employees-in-early.html">Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/05/visualization-of-startup-cto-equity-and.html">Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/cto-equity-and-compensation-at-venture.html">Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data</a> </li> </ul> <p>As always, if you would like additional help please take a look at the following:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a> </li> </ul> <h3>Challenges Revisited</h3> <p>Let’s look back at the challenges the Founders listed at the start of the session. </p> <ul> <li>I just want the cost, timeline and impact.  But my developers want to go into way too much detail. </li> </ul> <p>Developers rightly need a lot of detail to get at cost, timeline and impact.  Read <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html" target="_blank">Document Your MVP for a Developer</a> for all of the detail that you really need to provide.  Of course, you probably are going to provide more of a feature list.  They should ask you for lots of details on those features and then give you some general estimates of size.  Maybe even something like small, medium, large, Xlarge.  </p> <p>There is a balance here of how much granularity you want in your estimates and timeline vs. how much detail they want/need.  Have an open discussion with them about what you are trying to achieve through the questions.</p> <ul> <li>I’m a long way into development and I’m 90% done and we are having issues getting it completed </li> </ul> <p>See <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a> and <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/poor-software-developers-pull-plug.html">Poor Software Developers - Pull the Plug Early</a>.  This is a classic sign and you need to do something about it.  Ideally, you would have had a technical advisor, had better up-front definition, had more iteration, then you would not be in this situation.  Once you are here, it’s a tough spot.<!--EndFragment--></p> <ul><!--EndFragment--> <li>Developers like to over engineer.  They often don’t take into account the actual business need.  In fact, they often don’t really understand the business. </li> <li>Developers like to do things their way even when it doesn’t meet the needs of the business. </li> </ul> <p>As a founder, you do need to be telling the developers what the business and product goals are.  Provide the metrics you are trying to achieve.  However, yes, there are a lot of developers who will take a myopic via of how to solve particular problems.  Many are not interested in 3rd party technologies that can streamline development.  </p> <p>I just had a fellow CTO ask me about a particular technical design problem and several directions they could go and ask for my thoughts on the tradeoffs for those different choices.  For a younger technical person, this showed incredible maturity.  He was not afraid to show that he might not know the answer and ask for thoughts.  Plus he knew there were significant business trade-offs.</p> <p>If your developers are not providing trade-offs to you around the range of choices that they see in their solutions, that means they lack real understanding of their role.  This is where a technical advisor can be hugely beneficial.  They can force a more open-ended conversation about what the possibilities are.  And what the trade-offs will be.</p> <ul> <li>Developers (and Founders) are challenged to know how much is okay in terms of bugs. </li> </ul> <p>Great question.  Generally I say that developers should be doing significant developer level testing, but in early-stage startups, testing falls back on the founders.  If too much is getting through developer level, i.e., they hand you stuff that’s obviously broken and tell you its “done” – that’s a bad sign.  But then it becomes your job to find every last edge case bug.  Collect them all into a single big list – I really mean an issue tracker.  Prioritize.  And then point the developers to them.   Good developers will see thorough testing as a blessing.  They don’t want to put out poor quality work.</p> <ul> <li>I’m challenged getting developers to work with me when I can’t pay them market wages. </li> </ul> <p>That’s correct.  The market is great for developers.  You need to inspire them with the product and market, and the learning opportunity.  Ideally you can pay them a livable number.  Take a look back at the motivators and demotivators.  It’s tough though.  You have to work really hard finding developers who are going to jump on board.</p> <p>One other aspect is to make the development effort as small as possible.  The less you pay the faster your developers will leave.  If you have someone work for 3 months on something that will take 6 months to build, you will get very little from the effort.  The next developer will likely tell you they have to redo a lot of it.   Defining much shorter iterations on the way to a very small initial MVP.</p> <ul> <li>Developers don’t communicate well </li> </ul> <p>This one is going to take up it’s own blog post.  Communicating with Developers … coming soon.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-22836118729570791312013-09-30T07:59:00.000-07:002013-09-30T07:59:00.853-07:00Initial Conversation with a CTO or Technical Advisor<p>Are you a non-technical startup founder who’s about to go have a conversation with a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) or Technical advisory type person?   Maybe you are going for a reality check on your current situation - wondering if you have a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Weak Development Team</a> or a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/05/startup-founder-developer-gap.html">Startup Founder Developer Gap</a>.  Maybe you are trying to determine what technologies might apply that you should be evaluating.  Maybe you have questions about the types of developers you need and even whether you need a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Startup CTO or Developer</a> or both.  Or you want to know about whether you have the right <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/04/selecting-web-development-company.html">Web Development Company</a>.  Or what else you might need in <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html">Document Your MVP for a Developer</a>.</p> <p>You definitely should be having these conversations in order to find out what things you might not be considering (<a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">Questions Developers Should Ask a Startup Founder</a>) that are going to be important to your startup that as a non-technical founder you just don’t know to ask.  And this last one is why I tell every startup founder: <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have a Technical Advisor.</a></p> <p>Of course, when you go to have this conversation be prepared.  I recently had a phone call with an early stage entrepreneur that was incredibly frustrating.  I’d prefer that you don’t make the same mistakes.</p> <p>Let me lay out at a high level the normal conversation you will have with a strategic technical person:</p> <ul> <li>1 min – small talk </li> <li>0.25 min (that’s 15 seconds) – why you are meeting </li> <li>10 minutes – overview of the business and key challenges </li> <li>30 minutes – questions and thoughts from the technical person </li> </ul> <p>Let me run through these items.</p> <p>The classic first mistake is to extend the small talk period.  If you’ve not already read <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html">How to Hunt Programmers for Your Startup - A Field Guide</a>, go read what motivates and turns off a developer – CTOs and Technical Advisors are quite similar.  Small talk is not a motivator.  It’s not warming us up.  Don’t worry about going straight from “Hi, thanks for meeting with me” to “Well I want to respect your time, so let me dive in.”  Most technical people will appreciate you getting into things quickly.  Small talk is tough work for techies – so much so that people <a href="http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/05/13/the-4-step-plan-to-not-suck-at-talking-to-people/">post</a> to help techies with small talk.  Helping you with your challenges is fun.  Oh, and if you read that post, then you know that you will have earned bonus points by buying coffee, beer, whatever for the person as thanks for meeting/helping.  Yes, sadly, that still works on us techies.</p> <p><a href="http://xkcd.com/222/"><img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-Wbpr7cmtHkY/UkbuxpsOdgI/AAAAAAAABcU/THPehe5LImo/image%25255B7%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="600" height="221" /></a></p> <p>The second item is important to make sure we are on the same page on why we are getting together.  “I have some immediate questions.  I’m hoping to get input on X, Y and Z, but I also want thoughts on what I might not know to ask about.  Depending on where the conversation goes, we may want to talk about how you might be involved in an on-going way.”  </p> <p>The third item is REALLY important.  You need to be prepared to take the technical person through the standard stuff about the business that you would present up to an investor.  Actually, here are two posts with a pretty good list of background items you should plan to cover: <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-development-do-your.html">Startup Software Development Homework</a> and <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a>.  I personally like when founders have provided me this information prior to meeting for the first time.  It makes sure I know what the business really is, what’s the current state, and gives my analytic brain some time to process things.</p> <p>A common, but really frustrating, situation is when a startup founder wants to hold back details about the business and product to protect themselves.  As a technical person, I’m sitting there trying to solve a problem.  But the founder is trying to hide the problem.  Argh!  I’m frustrated just thinking about it.  I personally believe the best answer is to provide what you would to an investor.  You don’t ask for an NDA from an investor before presenting.  Don’t ask it from a technical person.  If there’s some really secret sauce, let’s say a special <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/11/matching-algorithm.html">Matching Algorithm</a>, you maybe can hide some of the details of it. </p> <p>Finally, we get to the fun part.  The technical person will begin to pelt you with questions about the business, product and technical challenges.</p> <p>We are not trying to be annoying with our questions.  What’s happening is that we’ve translated what you said into initial thoughts around:</p> <ul> <li>Business and technical risks  and mitigation strategies </li> <li>Technical challenges and possible solutions </li> <li>Possible third-party technologies that could be used </li> <li>What needs to get researched, architected, built </li> </ul> <p>You know how women complain that men just want to jump right to problem solving.  At the risk of offending lots of people …</p> <iframe height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-4EDhdAHrOg?rel=0" frameborder="0" width="560" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> <p> </p> <p>Us techies are just trying to solve all of your problems as quickly as we can.  We love interesting challenges.  We want to narrow it down and try to solve it.  It would be great if you just have a big nail in your head.  Normally, it’s not clear.</p> <p>Really, all the founder needs to do once we get into the back and forth is answer questions the best you can.  Sometimes you will need to give a technical person a couple of days to process things.  That’s another reason to maybe send background information ahead of meeting.</p> <p>Okay, let me recap the mistakes:</p> <ol> <li>Not sending information ahead of time </li> <li>Extending small talk </li> <li>Not describing why you want to talk </li> <li>Trying to hide most of the business/product (i.e., the problem) </li> </ol> <p>That’s about it.  And I feel much better now that I got it off my chest.  And I hope this will not dissuade startup founders from talking to me.  I REALLY do enjoy the problem solving.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-43627043356068845112013-08-29T06:26:00.001-07:002013-08-29T06:26:41.580-07:00USC's Silicon Beach Awards and Presentations (Discount Code)<p>I was just down at Demo Day for the USC Incubator.  They had some pretty high quality companies presenting.  I just found out about a great award opportunity for people connected to USC (or who can figure out a connection in time).  I also have a discount code below for the event.</p> <p>USC’s Marshall School of Business will host the second annual Silicon Beach Awards (SBAs), a $50,000 venture competition focused on innovation in technology & entertainment. The SBAs are a key part of the <a href="http://uscmailgate.com/clicks.php?coid=142646&cid=452&url=3591">http://siliconbeachusc.com/</a> event which is co-sponsored by USC’s Marshall School of Business, School of Cinematic Arts, and Viterbi School of Engineering. Startups that consist of at least one USC student or alum (less than 10 years from graduation) are encouraged to enter – and have a chance of winning up to $25,000!</p> <p><b>Silicon Beach Awards deadline is September 2!!</b></p> <p><b>Apply here: <a href="http://bit.ly/1bqAGbf">http://bit.ly/1bqAGbf</a></b></p> <p><b></b></p> <p><b>ABOUT THE PRIZES</b></p> <p>Significant cash prizes will be awarded to the top 3 teams: First place: $25,000, Second place: $15,000, Third place: $10,000. In addition, the top three finishers will also receive legal services from Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP, a premier law firm located in in the US, UK and Asia who are working with Fortune 500, FTSE 250 clients and start-up companies throughout a range of industries.</p> <p><b>Presentations Silicon Beach @ USC – September 18, USC Campus</b></p> <p>USC will be hosting its 2<sup>nd</sup> annual Silicon Beach event on September 18 on the USC campus. Silicon Beach @ USC will feature game-changers and thought leaders from Hollywood studios, technology startups, and academia. </p> <p>Presenters for the September 18 conference include:</p> <ul> <li>Albert Cheng, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Digital Media for Disney/ABC TV</li> <li>Hamet Watt, Co-founder &Chairman of MoviePass</li> <li>Ric Whitney, Head of VOD/EST for Intel Media</li> <li>Karen North, Director, Annenberg Program on Online Communities</li> <li>David Watson, Director of Product Innovation, Kids at Netflix</li> <li>Jason Corsello, CMO, Cornerstone OnDemand</li> <li>Dan Brian, EVP of Media at DemandMedia. </li> <li>Ashish Soni, Founding Director, Viterbi Students Institute for Innovation(VSi2), Executive Director of Digital Innovation, and faculty member, USC Viterbi School of Engineering</li> <li>Jimmy Liu, CEO, Gymflow </li> <li>Rajiv Maheswaran, CEO,  SecondSpectrum</li> <li>Jens Windau, CEO, AIO Robotics</li> <li>Kevin Winston, founder, Digital LA</li> </ul> <p>…and others!</p> <p>We will also recognize the next generation of innovators as we award over <b>$50,000</b> to participants in the USC Silicon Beach Awards venture competition.  </p> <p>To join us, register at <a href="https://siliconbeachusc-2013.eventbrite.com/">https://siliconbeachusc-2013.eventbrite.com/</a>  Use the promo code <b>FriendOfCTM </b>for half-price admission through Sept 11! </p> <p>More info on the conference and the venture competition at <a href="http://www.marshall.usc.edu/news/events/2013/silicon-beach-usc">http://www.marshall.usc.edu/news/events/2013/silicon-beach-usc</a></p> <p>To register at the discounted price use the promo code: <b>FriendOfCTM</b></p> <p><b></b></p> <p>1. Go to <a href="https://siliconbeachusc-2013.eventbrite.com/">https://siliconbeachusc-2013.eventbrite.com/</a></p> <p>2. Click on the “Enter Promotional Code” link at the bottom of the “Ticket Information” window</p> <p>3. Add this promotion code: <b>FriendOfCTM </b>and click APPLY</p> <p>4. Choose the Industry Guest - Early Bird ticket. Your fee will be reduced to $75 <i>as long as you register by Sept 11</i>. (Afterwards admission goes to $150.) </p> <p>5. Choose the number of tickets (up to 4) and complete the form. </p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-34626620091073502942013-05-21T08:21:00.000-07:002013-05-21T08:21:00.216-07:00Founder Challenges with Startup Development Teams and CTOs<p>I'm spending more of my time recently working with non-technical startup founders who are having challenges with their software/web/mobile development teams.  I thought it would be worth capturing some basic notes about what signals founders commonly are seeing that cause them to call me, what those signals might be indicating, and what might make sense to do as a founder if you are seeing some of these signals.</p> <h3>Common Signals</h3> <p>I've written previously about <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a>.  These are often the same things that cause a founder to reach out to me about helping their CTO, VP Engineering, tech team, off-shore development, etc.  Some of the top symptoms are:</p> <ul> <li>Frequently missed deadlines.  </li> <li>Everything takes a long time to build. </li> <li>Delivery of code/product that clearly has not been tested. </li> <li>Rogue developers with their own agenda. </li> <li>Not sure what's being built when and by whom on the team. </li> <li>Fixing one thing breaks something else. </li> <li>Bugs – no big deal.  The system keeps crashing – no problem. </li> <li>Annoyed at testers for finding bugs. </li> <li>Same problems seem to occur all the time with no desire to look at what’s behind the problem. </li> <li>All new features seem to require significant rewrites and a ton of development time. </li> <li>One of your better developers leaves. </li> <li>No questions being asked (<a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder</a>) </li> </ul> <p>And the #1 reason I get calls relates to an old software engineering adage:</p> <blockquote> <p>The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time.  The last 10% takes the other 90%.</p> </blockquote> <p>On the other side, signs that your team is doing well are:</p> <ul> <li>a high service level and availability of the product/system </li> <li>a high throughput of effective change </li> <li>a low amount of unplanned work </li> <li>a culture of change management </li> <li>a culture of continual improvement </li> <li>a culture of root-cause analysis </li> </ul> <h3>Source of the Problem</h3> <p>Most of the time, the cause of these challenges come down to:</p> <h4>Communication / Process</h4> <p>How well does the C-level team work together to define priorities, specific development tasks?  How strong is product management?  Is there a lot of rework?</p> <h4>Architecture</h4> <p>All startups will make a lot of changes and scale the product as they move along.  This means that early software architecture can sometimes not work as well as the startup moves forward.   Some amount of issues with this is normal.  On the other hand, sometimes architectures are very poorly done and causes significant problems every step of the way.</p> <h4>CTO Knowledge and Skill</h4> <p>I personally believe that the best CTOs will have a technical/developer background.  It's hard to manage a development team when you are not very technical.  Unfortunately, having a technical background and being a good coder doesn't necessarily translate well into being a good CTO.   Let's consider a brief description of what a CTO needs to be able to do.</p> <p><strong>Strategy, Planning, Key Relationships and R&D</strong>.  A CTO is responsible for understanding the needs of the business, the product direction short and long-term, establishing the overall technical direction, building and managing the development team, and leading all aspects of technology development in a way that ultimately leads to the best outcome for the business.  They need to take a critical role in the strategic direction helping the business navigate critical product/technology choices.  They often are involved in key client accounts, partnerships and external relationships.  Sometimes they will lead key product tests, special projects, essentially research and development.</p> <p><strong>Technical Direction</strong>.  Establishing technical direction can be really hard these days.  There are new things flying at you all the time.  It is extremely hard to be a adept at all of the technologies involved in a startup.  One of the real values of the <a href="http://www.lactoforum.org">LA CTO Forum</a> that I run is you can quickly get input on different technologies.  </p> <p><strong>Technical Leader</strong>.  As leader of the technical team, they need to build the best team possible given the needs of the business.  They need to establish the development and support process and development culture.    This obviously extends beyond the development team and requires integration with (or ownership of) support and operations.  </p> <h3>Don't Wait</h3> <p>If you are seeing these signals, then you likely have at least one of the above sources of challenges.  A lot of founders will wait and hope that the technical leadership can sort it out.  That often doesn't happen.  These problems need to be addressed right now. </p> <p>If you look at the sources, these are not things that just go away on their own.  Instead they tend to get worse:  </p> <ul> <li>Once you lose trust with a CTO and the development team, it is hard to get the trust back. </li> <li>If the CTO/team has made some bad technical choices early such as the wrong architecture, every dollar you spend will be partially wasted going forward. </li> <li>Developers will leave.  They don't like this situation either.  This puts you in a tough spot.  Transitioning early on your terms is better than when you are under the gun. </li> </ul> <p>Waiting will only make things worse.</p> <h3>Get Help</h3> <p>The reality is that as a non-technical founder, it is often very hard to get to the heart of the issue with your CTO or development team.  Walls quickly go up.  They snow you with technical aspects.  So what do you do?  Get help.</p> <p>My bias is that the help you want is from a good CTO who can come in as a peer of the existing CTO.  They will be able to understand what is going on, make suggestions, coach and otherwise help.</p> <p>Help can come from CTOs at other startups on a formal or informal basis, or <a href="http://www.techempower.com/whatwedo.html">CTO consultants</a> (like me).  Often you can get a pretty good handle on sources of problems by having a CTO or consultant come in for a few hours to talk with a few people from the C-team and the technical lead.  This will quickly uncover communication and process issues.  Issues with the architecture and technical team will take longer to diagnose.  </p> <p>Of course, turning around these issues will take some time.  Building skills and knowledge of the CTO takes some time.  Getting processes into place and operating effectively takes some time.   But it makes sense to start now as the problem will not fix itself.</p> <h3>Related Posts</h3> <p><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One</a></p> <p><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Founder Developer Gap</a></p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-48527828878939610342013-04-09T17:35:00.001-07:002013-04-09T17:37:29.244-07:00Selecting a Web Development Company <p>I've written before about finding <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/01/los-angeles-web-developer.html">Web Development Firms in Los Angeles</a>.  What I didn't discuss was how you should go about selecting the right company.  I just got an email asking about exactly this:</p> <blockquote> <p>I'm with a new company that needs some software built, but doesn't need (or have the resources for) a large staff of software developers.  They've been in talks with some consulting companies, but don't quite the know the criteria for evaluating them and things like references(and where to get them).</p> </blockquote> <p>So here are some thoughts on selecting the right firm.</p> <h3>What Do You Need</h3> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-MUT4iM32Krc/UWS0RiWDQUI/AAAAAAAABU8/BszhV_sIsWk/s1600-h/image%25255B3%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: right; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" align="right" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-0Ptfi-4hfUc/UWS0SD6aOOI/AAAAAAAABVE/JruH01fFCOo/image_thumb%25255B1%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="260" height="180" /></a>It's critical to know what kind of skills you really need.  Different firms will have very different skill sets:</p> <ul> <li>Do you need user interface design?  Graphic design?  Do you have the basics already defines and just need it to be fleshed out?  Or are you starting from scratch?</li> <li>Do you have the functionality defined?</li> <li>Do you have some complexity around algorithms, database?</li> <li>Do you have scale issues now or later?</li> <li>Are there particular technologies or platforms involved?</li> </ul> <p>You will find firms that are design/interface heavy and light on development.  Others that are heavier on development.  Some will have some specific skill sets.  You may find that you want a combination of these skills and want to look at finding them in different people/firms.</p> <p>Most of the rest of the post is going to focus more on finding development rather than design firms.  If you need user interface and/or graphic design, that's a slightly different selection process.  Some of what I have below applies.  And you will want to make sure you see what the particular designers have done, samples of their work product, their process, etc.  Make sure you know who will be doing the actual work.</p> <h3>Selection Criteria</h3> <p>Here is what I would be looking for:</p> <ul> <li>What have they worked on?  Who worked on those projects?  Are they still at the firm?  Have they worked on projects that are similar to your project?  Have they used the technologies that are involved in your project?  And make sure you see those projects. <br /> <br />Don't be swayed by big name firms or other kinds of name dropping.  I (and <a href="http://www.techempower.com">TechEmpower</a>) have worked with IBM, HP, Xerox, etc.  That says something.  But it's quite different working for large firms than it is with startups.  Make sure you know exactly what the company did on each project.  And they should not get to count items in their portfolio that were done at another company/job - yes, that's quite common, especially in new firms. <br /></li> <li>Quality Result.  Make sure that what they produce looks and acts right.  See it in action.  Some developers just don't quite get that you need to produce a quality result.  That said, don't be fooled by things that look really cool when you need functional results.  You are looking for someone who cares about the look, but you are hiring the development firm for it's development skills not its graphic design skills. <br /></li> <li>Are they asking good questions?  You should be getting an estimate for the work effort before you get started.  Do not fall into the trap of <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html">Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development</a>.  To provide you an estimate, they will need to ask you a bunch of questions.  It's shocking to me that many firms will not ask questions.  They will give you a quote.  Run away.  They are either not seeing the questions that need to be asked or not interested in finding out what you really need so they can provide a reasonable estimate. <br /> <br />By the way, there was somewhat a trick question above "Do you have the functionality defined?"  You may think you have it pretty well defined.  But show it to a decent set of developers and they should be able to make your head swim with all the things you've not considered.  <br /></li> <li>How good is the company's own site?  They shouldn't be showing you that they don't care at all about looks and content on their own site.  But if their site is really gorgeous, that means they are good at design, not necessarily development.    <br /></li> <li>How many full-time W2 employees do you have?  How many contractors?  Where are they located? (have you seen the offices?)  What are the skills of employees vs. contractors? <br /></li> <li>What's their process?  How do you know if you are on track with development?  How is testing handled?  What are the review periods?  What's my responsibility in the process? <br /></li> <li>Are budgets and deadlines hard or soft?  What percentage of their projects launch on-time and on-budget as compared to what they estimated up front?  How do they achieve that result? <br /></li> <li>How do you communicate?  Is there a project manager?  This can be both good and bad.  Some project managers get in the way of effective communication.  Have conversations with the point person and make sure you will be comfortable with them and that they will add value to the process. <br /></li> <li>What do they do after the web site is launched?  Do they help with transition to in-house or other developers? <br /></li> <li>What's the plan for hosting and support? <br /></li> <li>Do they have repeat or long-term clients? <br /></li> <li>References.  They should be willing to share references.  But you may also want to get in touch with people at companies that they have been showing you as part of the portfolio.  You can find and reach them through LinkedIn.</li> </ul> <h3>Problem Signals</h3> <p>All of the following are signals to me that there may be risks/issues:</p> <ul> <li>Not asking questions.</li> <li>Not asking you what your plans are for mobile.</li> <li>Recommending Flash.</li> <li>The firm is less than two years old. </li> <li>The firm is smaller than 10 people. </li> <li>The firm is completely virtual.</li> <li>They didn't ask you some of the questions in: <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">32 Questions Developers Should Ask a Startup Founder</a>.</li> <li>They have the lowest price out of several vendors several of which come in at roughly the same higher price.</li> <li>They believe there's no maintenance after launch.</li> <li>They don't seem to care about you or your project.</li> <li>You are feeling like you are being sold.</li> </ul> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-13848912010062764112013-04-02T16:15:00.001-07:002013-04-02T16:16:26.715-07:00Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP<p>I'm presenting Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP next week at Coloft (<a href="http://buildyourmvp.eventbrite.com/">Details/Registration</a>).  I'm going to be looking at aspects like:</p> <ul> <li>Things to consider before building your MVP </li> <li>Features often overlooked when documenting an MVP for developers </li> <li>Understanding important metrics you want to measure </li> <li>Risks and challenges in developing an MVP.</li> </ul> <p>It should be a fun evening with lots of interesting conversation.  This post will provide links to participants as well as to readers.</p> <h3>What's Going to Go Wrong</h3> <p>A lot of founders don't really understand Lean Startup principles.  They look at the following high level definition of Lean:</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-_B_WaCjp-5k/UVtmrQdkyvI/AAAAAAAABUk/Z7Dx_g4HKxo/s1600-h/image%25255B4%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-ixov4ONQyjs/UVtmrmpt_dI/AAAAAAAABUo/eiXIQ5Y2B5w/image_thumb%25255B2%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="500" height="360" /></a></p> <p>and they interpret that as write up an executive summary with your ideas and hand it to developers to build.  What's going to go wrong?  Well I often get the unfortunate call from startup founders where all kinds of things have gone wrong:</p> <ul> <li>Built the Wrong Product</li> <li>Poor Product Quality - Code is really bad, full of bugs, missing critical features</li> <li>Doesn’t Scale Past a Couple Users</li> <li>Not Protected – Access to Code, Rights on Code</li> </ul> <h3>MVP Homework</h3> <p>Why are you building your MVP in the first place?  See <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/03/investors-mvps-and-evidence-of-traction.html">Investors, MVPs and Evidence of Traction</a>.  </p> <p>Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers?</p> <p>Have you <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html">Documented Your MVP for Your Developer</a>s?</p> <p>Have you looked through <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">Things You May Have Forgot in Your MVP</a> and provided answers to these?</p> <p>Do you have a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One</a>?</p> <p>Don't be fooled by a<a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html"> Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development</a>.</p> <h3>While You Are Building Your MVP</h3> <p>Look for the following <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a>.  Correct your course quickly.  And when you have <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/poor-software-developers-pull-plug.html">Poor Software Developers - Pull the Plug Early</a>.</p> <p>Learn how to test and possibly use testing and load tools.  See: <a href="http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html">http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html</a></p> <h3>Additional Resources</h3> <ul><!--EndFragment--></ul> <ul> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html">How to Hunt Programmers for Your Startup - A Field Guide</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/03/finding-technical-cofounder-for-your.html">Finding a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/06/choosing-programming-language-and.html">Choosing a Programming Language and Framework for Your Startup</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/05/startup-founder-developer-gap.html">Startup Founder Developer Gap</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-developers.html">Startup Software Developers</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/technology-roles-in-startups.html">Technology Roles in Startups</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Startup CTO or Developer</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/10/startup.html">Startup Metrics</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/02/building-your-mvp-as-non-technical.html">Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Startup Founder</a></li> </ul> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-54209491314866492932013-03-28T10:31:00.001-07:002013-03-28T10:31:17.552-07:00Web Framework Performance - Startup Founders Need to See These Numbers<p>In <a href="http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/28/framework-benchmarks/">Web Framework Benchmarks</a>, there are some very interesting and surprising numbers around the performance of various web frameworks.   Startup Founders really need to see these numbers.  And I hope you are not running on Cake PHP when you see these numbers.</p> <p><img src="http://www.techempower.com/images/ec2-json.png" /></p> <p>Many of us are putting more into the front-end and having the application logic and back-end exposed through JavaScript (JSON) APIs.  In some ways, this frees us from worrying as much about the specific framework that's being used.   I've found myself looking mostly at talent and time to market.  But these numbers are causing me to pause a bit and really think about the choice of framework in terms of performance.</p> <p>In looking at these numbers, seeing Cake PHP at 500x slower, Ruby-Rails and Django at 50x slower really surprised me.</p> <p>I was also surprised by the performance improvement on dedicated hardware as compared to EC2 instances of roughly 10x.  </p> <h1>Important Implications</h1> <p>Well I'm currently working with startup founders on their systems in JRuby, Django, PHP and Java.  </p> <p>Several of these are B2B applications with relatively smaller audiences.  I'm feeling okay about our choices of frameworks that are slower and will cost more in terms of hosting and managing growth.  The availability of talent was an important factor.</p> <p>However, startup founders who are building applications that have:</p> <ul> <li>Large Audiences - consumer facing</li> <li>Complex Processing - examples: <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/04/matching.html">Matching</a>, Social Network Analysis, Compatibility Scoring, etc.</li> <li>Database Intensive</li> </ul> <p>need to consider going with a higher performance solution.  Most startups do not get a chance to move from one framework to another.   It takes a lot of time and effort and the result is that you get to go through a whole new set of bugs only to get back to where you started but with a faster, more scalable application.  Think about twitter - but they had lots of money.</p> <p>Often we justify building an MVP in whatever framework is fastest to build or where we have resources that know that framework.   You may get into the market, but just know that you are going to pay the price when you start to get traction.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-33353885745383382952013-03-11T14:15:00.001-07:002013-03-11T14:15:00.700-07:00Investors, MVPs and Evidence of Traction<p>Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post:</p> <blockquote> <p>"I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product."</p> </blockquote> <p>In <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2013/02/building-your-mvp-as-non-technical.html">Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Startup Founder</a>, I mentioned that before you build your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you need to be really clear on your purpose.  </p> <p>In most cases, when you are building your MVP, you are trying to prove out certain <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/10/startup.html">startup metrics</a> such as:</p> <ul> <li>Cost of Customer Acquisition </li> <li>Conversion Rates / Pricing </li> <li>Viral Coefficient </li> </ul> <p>in order to get those numbers in front of investors so that you have evidence of traction and can show that you can begin to build out more of the real product and begin to scale the business.</p> <p>It is almost never the case that you are building an MVP to "show" to an investor the product itself.  Yes, the investor may literally have said to you:</p> <blockquote> <p>"That is something I'd seriously think about investing in when you have your product built."</p> </blockquote> <p>But the reality is that they don't mean that.  Two aspects to this:</p> <ul> <li>You can let an investor see your product via a mockup or clickable prototype. </li> <li>If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics.  They really want metrics, not a product. </li> </ul> <p><strong>A Mockup is Enough to Show the Product</strong></p> <p>Most investors can look at a mockup or clickable prototype and have a pretty good sense of the product.  They may wonder if it can be built technically, but I (or other CTOs) can answer that question without building any code.  </p> <p><strong>Cases Where a Mockup is Not Enough</strong></p> <p>There are a few cases where mockups or clickable prototypes may not be enough:</p> <ul> <li>Usability, interaction design, etc.  For example, the iPod won not because of better features and functions.  It won because of interface, ease of use.  To get an investor excited about another MP3 player at the time, they would have needed to play with the interface.  That said, you likely could have still come up with some cheaper way than building the iPod. <br /></li> <li>Results of Algorithms.  Often you can't tell if something like a search engine or <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2009/11/matching-algorithm.html">matching algorithm</a> is really going to have better results until you use it.  You may have to build something out to show it working for someone to evaluate whether it really works better than what else exists. </li> </ul> <p>I would guess that this represents less than 5% of startups.</p> <p><strong>Investors Really Want Evidence of Traction</strong></p> <p>So you built your MVP; you bring it to the investor; you demo it; and I will guarantee they will ask you:</p> <blockquote> <p>"So how many users do you have?  </p> <p>How much is it costing you to get users?  </p> <p>How much are you making from your users?" </p> </blockquote> <p>And other similar questions.  Yes, they are happy that you have your product built and that does make it much more investable.  But now that you have a product, you should be able to show that people want to and/or are willing to pay to use it.</p> <p><strong>Bad News?  Not Really</strong></p> <p>At first you may be thinking that this is all bad news.  Wow, now Tony is telling me that not only do I need to build my MVP, but I need to actually show evidence of traction.  That's an even tougher hurdle.  Yes, that's correct.  Sorry, but that's the reality.</p> <p>However, the good news is that for most investors, you can certainly change the question and get a lot more information without ever building the MVP.  The real question you should be asking is "When I've built this product and show you the following metrics, would you invest?"  The "this product" will be a well formulated mock-up or clickable prototype.  If you don't have that, then you will naturally let the investor off the hook by saying, show me the product.</p> <p>I actually think you can push the conversation pretty far with most investors and a few good mockups.  No, you won't know if you will really get a check - most investors are hard to actually get a check from - but you will have a pretty good indication.  </p> <p>Bottom line is that before you go and build your MVP:</p> <ul> <li>Define your MVP really well on paper and <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html">Document Your <em>MVP</em> for a Developer</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-development-do-your.html">Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything</a></li> <li>Make Sure You look at <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder</a></li> <li>Figure out the Evidence of Traction you really need</li> <li>Get a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One</a></li> <li>Test all of this with Investors</li> </ul> <h1>Additional Sources</h1> <a href="http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2013/02/how-much-traction-is-enough-for.html">How Much Traction is Enough for Investors?</a> <p>But never forget that traction is necessary, but may not be sufficient, to lower the risk perception of investors, and assure an investment. The quality of the team, and overall financial health are equally important, as well as how your offering compares to competitors.</p> <p><a href="http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/now_that_youve_got_mvp_its_time_to_think_about_mvc.shtml">Now that You've Got MVP, It's Time to Think About MVC</a></p> <p>You can't raise money on achieving an MVP. Investors demand more than that.</p> <p>As Steve Blank likes to say:</p> <blockquote> <p>A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search <br />for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model</p> </blockquote> <p>The unfortunate reality is - an MVP is not the above! Yet most of the newly minted entrepreneurs I've met think their job is nearly done when they've found MVP - they think they can go build a pitch off their early MVP and raise money!</p> <p>A startup does require MVP but it is much more than just MVP. The problem is that MVP means early adoption of product and its features, maybe even some who will pay. But it doesn't tell you how many people will do it in the long term and whether this can support the company (the people and operations within) that is behind it.</p> <p><a href="http://infochachkie.com/what-the-heck-does-traction-really-mean-to-a-vc/">What The Heck Does “Traction” Really Mean To A VC?</a></p> <p>Great analysis from John Greathouse: </p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-JVhb8Ye9t4w/UT5JS97Ok3I/AAAAAAAABTU/KchQXStz9-0/s1600-h/investor-evidence%25255B6%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="investor-evidence" border="0" alt="investor-evidence" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-ierv3JnK5b0/UT5JTW2WaAI/AAAAAAAABTc/MAa1i33Bcek/investor-evidence_thumb%25255B4%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="500" height="352" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-Nph_SUkwYd4/UT5JUB050QI/AAAAAAAABTk/6ETnxibc-sI/s1600-h/investor-evidence-2%25255B4%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="investor-evidence-2" border="0" alt="investor-evidence-2" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-BqLw_XdZ0P4/UT5JUl-L6iI/AAAAAAAABTs/3JDwqXzyru0/investor-evidence-2_thumb%25255B2%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="500" height="464" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/01/23/do-you-speak-vc-a-beginners-guide-to-investors/">Do You Speak VC? A Beginner's Guide to Investors</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/startingup/how-to-speak-the-language-of-venture-capital/">How to Speak the Language of Venture Capital</a></p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-74325607566341525862013-02-13T07:34:00.001-08:002013-02-13T07:34:47.709-08:00Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder<p>I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built.  It had a passionate group of 50 people attending.  I promised to do this post as a follow-up to the session to provide additional links and information.  It should also give a sense of what I covered to people who were not there.</p> <p>Here is the outline of the talk and some links from prior posts that talk to the issues that I discussed in the talk.</p> <h3>Purpose of an MVP and Defining the Right MVP</h3> <p>I've really not talked as much about this in my blog even though its hugely important.  I generally hear the following as reasons for founders building their MVP:</p> <ul> <li>I need it to get investors interested (NOT VALID) </li> <li>I need it to see how early customers use it to get feedback (RARELY VALID) </li> <li>I need it to test/prove aspects of the product such as (VALID) <ul> <li>Cost of Customer Acquisition </li> <li>Conversion Rates / Pricing </li> <li>Viral Coefficient </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>My claim is that the first bullet, although extremely common, is a misguided reason to build the MVP.  Investors my tell you that, but what they can look at your product on paper and tell what it does and they will understand if it can be built.  Once you build it, they will now ask you about the key metrics that they need proven in order to see if you really are a good investment.</p> <p>The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either.  Again, putting something down on paper (wireframes, graphic comps) and getting feedback from potential users can tell you most of what you would learn from a working MVP.  There are a few cases where you somewhat need to see the system operating to have a sense of the value.  Examples might be a recommendation engine, search engine, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/04/matching.html">matching</a> engine or something with a complex interface.  Even with these, you will have paper-tested your MVP, but the reality is that customers will not be able to assess the value to them until they actually use it.  </p> <p>The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2009/10/startup.html">Startup Metrics</a> for the business.  To prove/disprove a hypothesis.  One of the questions in the session was "How do you know what to put in your MVP?"  Once you have the metrics defined, it focuses your effort.</p> <h3>Ways to Make Your MVP More Minimum</h3> <p>We spent quite a bit of time talking about a complexity scale and the kinds of resources you can viably use at different levels of complexity.</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-a42h57zldfo/URuylCYFTgI/AAAAAAAABR4/CjpCH5_xQEs/s1600-h/image%25255B4%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-0xsYWZAjZZk/URuylnFXDhI/AAAAAAAABSA/rOjeM02TWOw/image_thumb%25255B2%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="560" height="295" /></a></p> <p>Simple MVPs get built with less the 3 Programmer Months worth of effort (that's 3 months a single programmer working full-time).  More complex MVPs are going to be 12+ Programmer months.  There are some MVPs that are unavoidably complex.  eHarmony for me fell into that camp.  We needed the matching algorithm.  Many MVPs can be made to be very simple.</p> <ul> <li><strong>Paper Prototype or a Smoke and Mirrors Prototype</strong> - you can just build something on paper or even just one that you can click through and get a lot of the feedback you need. </li> <li><strong>Fake Site</strong> - you can have what looks to be a real site, even take "orders" but not actually have anything able to run it. </li> <li><strong>Leverage Existing Platforms or Third Party Products</strong> - you want to test your social network, grab Drupal and whip something together, or even just use a hosted service. </li> <li><strong>WordPress</strong> - we spent quite a bit of time talking about how you could do a lot with WordPress to provide simple forms of lots of functionality.  WordPress is pretty easy to hack.  And the back-end is something that a non-technical founder can manage.  We end up using WordPress a lot as the marketing front-end of our web sites. </li> </ul> <p>The bottom line is that you should first look to make your Minimum as Minimum as possible.</p> <p>Here are some important and relevant posts that relate to the topic of defining the right MVP.  The "Questions" post is probably the most important.  </p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/dont-subtract-restart-to-find-minimum.html">Don’t Subtract - Restart to Find the Minimum Viable Product</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">32 Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder</a> </li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/12/startup-software-development-do-your.html">Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Before You Develop Anything</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/document-your-mvp-for-developer.html">Document Your <em>MVP</em> for a Developer</a> </li> </ul> <h3>What Do you Need to Get Your MVP Built </h3> <p>From the graphic above, you can see the kind of resource you might need to be able to build your MVP.  If you are on the lower complexity end, the key is defining small chunks of work that can be done quickly by a developer.  If you do not break it down into small pieces, its hard to make progress with part-time resources, freelancers, etc.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/11/equity-only-cto-and-equity-only.html">Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/technology-roles-in-startups.html">Technology Roles in Startups</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/04/19/want-to-know-the-difference-between-a-cto-and-a-vp-engineering/">Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?</a> (someone asked specifically about this)</li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/04/hiring-cto-for-your-startup.html">Hiring a CTO for Your Startup</a></li> </ul> <h3>Founder / Developer Gap</h3> <p>I've spent a lot of time on the <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/05/startup-founder-developer-gap.html">Startup Founder Developer Gap</a> and knowing what you need in terms of a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Startup CTO or Developer</a>.  </p> <p>In this talk, we spent most of our time on <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have One</a> and how they should be helping you:</p> <ul> <li>Specify the right things to be built.  </li> <li>Third party products are used appropriately. </li> <li>Structure development contracts appropriately or directing the in-house team appropriately. </li> <li>Plan for past the initial MVP. </li> <li>Review the code being built. </li> </ul> <h3>Finding and Selecting a Technical Cofounder / Developers</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html">How to Hunt Programmers for Your Startup - A Field Guide</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/03/finding-technical-cofounder-for-your.html">Finding a Technical Cofounder for Your Startup</a></li> </ul> <h3>Development Challenges </h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html">Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/poor-software-developers-pull-plug.html">Poor Software Developers - Pull the Plug Early</a></li> <li><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a> </li> </ul> <h3>Technology Choices</h3> <p><a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/06/choosing-programming-language-and.html">Choosing a Programming Language and Framework for Your Startup</a></p> <p> </p> <p>Finally, if you made it this far, then take a look at: <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a>.  I'm always happy to try to help startups figure out how to go after creating their MVP.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-64873301467720479282013-01-02T07:15:00.000-08:002013-01-02T07:15:00.197-08:00Startup Mentors<p>I've had several <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Startup CTO Consulting</a> sessions recently where it became apparent that the Founder needed help with the business and product as much or more than the technology.  I suggested that they should look for someone like me, but on the business end.  Then we discussed how they could go about finding this startup business advisor.</p> <p>Then I got an email that asked:</p> <blockquote> <p>I'm leading the marketing efforts for an early-stage startup.  I recently completed an MBA, which I feel gave me a good basis in the fundamentals of building our brand from the ground up. However, I often wish that I had someone more experienced both in marketing and working in a startup environment that I could go to for advice. Do you have any suggestions for how to find a good mentor?</p> </blockquote> <p>Great question and I believe that just like finding a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">Technical Advisor</a> for your startup is critical, finding a good mentor is critical. </p> <h1>Mentor vs. Advisor</h1> <p>Generally when I talk about startup mentors and advisors, I distinguish them in terms of:</p> <ul> <li>Mentor focus is You:  <br /> <br />The marketing person above is looking for someone to help them with their personal challenge.  They want someone who understands their current role and can help them be successful there.  They will also be concerned about how this leads to their next role.  They may open doors to the next role. <br /></li> <li>Advisor focus is Your Business: <br /> <br />The startup founders need help with the business and I'm advising them to find an Advisor who will focus more on the business then on them as a person.  They likely want someone who knows the industry and can open doors that can help the business. </li> </ul> <p>These are not mutually exclusive and good mentors and advisors get into both.  </p> <h1>Finding Potential Mentors</h1> <p>You are looking for someone who is </p> <ul> <li>A couple steps ahead of you in progression </li> <li>Have worked in similar roles in similar kinds of companies </li> <li>Local to you </li> </ul> <p>For example, I'm looking for a marketing professional who's worked at a couple early-stage startups ideally one of these is B2B selling to advertisers and is located in Los Angeles area.</p> <p>You should begin asking at networking events and people you know in the startup world.</p> <p>For me, I'd use LinkedIn.  The challenge is that LinkedIn is not that great with finding people who were at early-stage startups.  So the way I would do it is to find examples of specific startups that have grown up locally and who marketed similar to how you plan to market.  Then you search for the people who were in marketing there early on.  Likely they've progressed, so it may be a pretty natural fit.  This can take some work, but its worth it.</p> <p>This also avoids a common problem that will sometimes happen when you go the networking route.  People will suggest folks who are high profile.  They regularly speaks at conferences, used to work at Google, and have other similarly impressive aspects to their background.  That may sound good, but that doesn't make them a good mentor.  </p> <p>Have they worked in similar kinds of situations?  Most of us are not Google.  An early-stage startup is a different animal.   From <a href="http://readwrite.com/2012/05/21/why-every-startup-founder-needs-a-mentor-and-how-to-find-one">Why Every Startup Founder Needs a Mentor - And How to Find One</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Don’t just fall in love with someone’s reputation, perceived celebrity or name. Identify someone who could be directly relevant to what you want to do, or who is pursuing a similar vision. And someone who is likely to have the time and the inclination to help you.</p> </blockquote> <h1>Mentor Progression</h1> <p>To me this is a complex problem, it's a bit like dating/marriage.  You are the person who wants to commit but you have no idea if the other party is going to be willing to commit to you.  </p> <p>I don't believe that you should go out saying to a potential mentor that you are looking for a mentor.  While that's open and honest, you know how it works out if you bring up commitment too early.  And I'm not alone.  In <a href="http://www.s.co/content/how-find-and-keep-your-ideal-mentor">How to Find and Keep Your Ideal Mentor</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Once you’ve identified an ideal mentor, you need to create the relationship that houses the mentorship. Here’s a little secret about finding mentors — <strong>nobody has time to mentor you</strong>. And they probably lack interest initially. If you’ve ever sought out mentors, you’ve probably found that many of them were reluctant to make the commitment and <strong>ran when they heard the word “mentor.”</strong> </p> </blockquote> <p>So, where do you start?  For me, its coffee?</p> <blockquote> <p>Can I buy you a coffee and talk to you about my challenges?</p> </blockquote> <p>Or in the case of the LinkedIn outreach:</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi John,</p> <p>I'm leading the marketing efforts for <a href="http://www.startuproar.com/">StartupRoar</a>, an early-stage startup that sells to B2B advertisers.  We are doing well, but have some interesting challenges. </p> <p>It looks like you were in a similar kind of role at XXX and you likely had some of the same challenges.  </p> <p>Would you be open to getting together for coffee and talk about my challenges and how you addressed them before?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Tony</p> </blockquote> <p>If you are working on something interesting and you ask nicely, there are a lot of people who are willing to have the conversation.  And sometimes that grows into more conversations.</p> <p>If you've talked to a bunch of people and no one is willing to get coffee with you, then that's a sign that you are working on something that's not interesting or you've not done your homework.</p> <p>At the end of your first coffee, if things have gone well, I like to say</p> <blockquote> <p>This was great.  I really appreciate your time.  I've got a lot of great ideas and things to do.  Would you be open to getting together again at some point as I continue down this path?</p> </blockquote> <p>That's right, you begin to set up your second date right at the end of your first date.  </p> <h1>Accelerator / Incubator Mentors </h1> <p>Most accelerators and incubators have a long list of potential mentors.  I'm a mentor at <a href="http://startengine.com/">Start Engine</a> and <a href="http://fi.co/?target=Los+Angeles">Founders Institute LA</a>.  I want to warn you that just because you are going into one of these programs doesn't mean you will find a mentor.  It means you have easy access to people who could become a mentor.  You still have to do the work of connecting with these people and turning them into an actual mentor.</p> <p>In <a href="http://freddestin.com/2012/03/startup-mentoring-the-socratic-way.html">Startup Mentoring, The Socratic Way</a>, Fred Destin tells us: </p> <blockquote> <p>The faster you can get <strong>past the pitch phase</strong> ("let me convince you that my idea is great")<strong>to the constructive phase</strong> ("let me exchange with you to make this thing better"), the more benefit you will both derive from the interaction.</p> </blockquote> <p>I've been in lots of conversations where the founder is just pitching me.  This happens a lot at the incubators / accelerators.  I'm thinking I'm in the meeting trying to help.  All we get are pitches and most often there's not opportunity for a startup to say, "I could use some help with X." </p> <p>We all have challenges - lots of challenges.  Be open about your challenges, especially when you are talking to a potential mentor.  </p> <p>You still need to tell them about your challenges and start with a meeting/coffee.</p> <p>Let me stop here, because if you are in a program like this, then just go over to Ben Yoskovitz's post <a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/mentors-in-startup-accelerators/2012/05/03/">How to Maximize the Value of Mentors in Accelerators</a>.</p> <h1>Do Your Homework</h1> <p>I worked on a startup project with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stedman_Graham">Stedman Graham</a> and when he was doing a presentation for a group of teachers, he said something similar to this <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0310/03/lkl.00.html">CNN interview</a> that really stuck with me:</p> <blockquote> <p>Everybody's equal because we have 24 hours. The question becomes, "What do you do with your 24 hours?" </p> </blockquote> <p>He's talking about making life choices, but anyone who's worked in a startup knows that there are always a million things to do and we constantly make choices about where we will spend our time.</p> <p>The same is true of your advisors and mentors.  So show respect for their time by doing your homework before you ask them questions.</p> <p>I wrote about this a long time ago in <a href="http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/03/questions-before-you-ask.html">Questions Before You Ask</a>.  In that case, I was talking about the homework you should do before you reach out through LinkedIn for a question.  </p> <p>There's a ton of information out there, so if you have a particular situation, make sure you've:</p> <ol> <li>Searched for Answers </li> <li>Keep a List of What You've Found </li> <li>Read through What You Find </li> <li>Compose What You Find Into a Preliminary Answer </li> <li>Figure Out What the Real Question Is </li> <li>Ask the Real Question </li> </ol> <p>If you are asking your mentor questions that shows you've not done your homework, you will likely lose access to that person's time.  They will push you to do your homework the first time.  The second time, say goodbye.</p> <h1>Additional Resources</h1> <ul> <li><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors">Venture Hacks - Advisors Series</a> </li> <li><a href="http://99u.com/tips/7013/Finding-(And-Keeping)-The-Right-Advisors-For-Your-Business">Finding (And Keeping) The Right Advisors For Your Business</a> </li> <li><a href="http://foundermentors.com/blog/bid/35353/What-is-a-Mentor-Cycle">What is a Mentor Cycle</a> </li> <li><a href="http://siliconflorist.com/2012/07/03/advice-inspiration-startup-mentors/">Mentoring the mentors: Advice and inspiration for startup mentors</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.instigatorblog.com/mentoring-startups/2012/04/25/">How I Try to Mentor Startups (And Hopefully Add Value)</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.davidgcohen.com/2011/08/28/the-mentor-manifesto/">Mentor Manifesto</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.davidgcohen.com/2007/10/31/tip-2-find-and-engage-great-mentors/">Find and engage great mentors</a> </li> <li><a href="http://klinger.io/post/36812415337/startup-mentoring-sessions-how-to-get-the-most-out-of">Startup Mentoring Sessions - How to Get the Most Out of Them</a> </li> </ul> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-56485092846291088902012-12-19T09:45:00.001-08:002016-08-10T17:36:57.980-07:00Document Your MVP for a DeveloperI was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) built. He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a> and then I get to a very common conversation:<br />
<blockquote>
<strong>Me</strong>: <em>Do you have specs?</em><br />
<strong>Founder</strong>: <em>Ummm ... <embarrased look> ... what do you mean?</em><br />
<strong>Me</strong>: <em>Product definition, use cases, feature list, wireframes, comps, really whatever you have.</em><br />
<strong>Founder</strong>: <em>Umm ... <still embarrassed> ... what format would you and the developer want that in?</em> </blockquote>
I'm never trying to embarrass someone. I know how it feels. It's the same as when I've created financial models and then have it reviewed by a hard-core CFO, sophisticated investor or similar kind of expert. And in the case of defining mobile/web/software, there is even more variability in terms of form and format.<br />
So, I promised this founder to do a post talking about how you go about create specifications of your MVP.<br />
<h2>
</h2>
<h1>
First Relax</h1>
<a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/--9w-FsV4rrc/UNH9_jgGZEI/AAAAAAAABQc/3ETY3IrdzEE/s1600-h/image%25255B5%25255D.png"><img align="right" alt="image" border="0" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-lPPdjFkn8Vc/UNH-AT9nN5I/AAAAAAAABQk/0qAzm-hjIVI/image_thumb%25255B3%25255D.png?imgmax=800" height="198" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: right; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="380" /></a>Before you begin reading all of the stuff below, it's going to be new, different, confusing. You likely are writing your first one of these. Don't stress over format. Don't stress if you are doing it right. <br />
This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product. <br />
Conversations with a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/12/technical-advisors-every-webmobile.html">technical advisors</a> or possible developers should be iterative. <br />
In fact, let me provide an important warning:<br />
<blockquote>
If you create these documents, don't have input from a technical resource, take it to a development shop and they provide you a price. Go find a new technical resource. </blockquote>
So, just get down what you can in a form that works for you. I don't expect you to provide all of these things. Part of what I like to find out is where you are relative to capturing these things.<br />
<h1>
Business Concept </h1>
The key first part of the conversation with a developer is having a good capture of the business more broadly. The <a href="http://steveblank.com/2010/10/25/entrepreneurship-as-a-science-%E2%80%93-the-business-modelcustomer-development-stack/">business canvas model</a> is a good short list. Or you can have a <a href="http://greghead.com/the-basic-elements-of-the-angel-investor-pitch/">pitch deck</a>. You might also have a business plan, marketing plan, financials, competitor analysis or other kinds of background document.<br />
Ideally you are also able to say what you are really trying to prove to get to the next level. For example, if you are trying to determine viral coefficient (see <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/10/startup.html">Startup Metrics</a>), then the focus should be around those aspects of the MVP. It's important to know where the business is today and what you are really trying to achieve.<br />
Quite often these things get old quickly. It's fine to send out documents that have older information. Just make note of it in the document and/or in an email when you send it. Seeing the evolution of thinking is not a bad thing.<br />
<h1>
Customer Development Notes</h1>
I'm assuming founders are having <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-at-startup2startup">customer development</a> conversations. It would be great to get notes and summaries from these. See also: <a href="http://giffconstable.com/2012/12/12-tips-for-early-customer-development-interviews-revision-3/">12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews</a>, <a href="http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2012/12/14/twelv-tips-for-customer-development-interviews/">12 tips for customer development</a>, <a href="http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2011/10/19/tips-for-b2b-customer-development-interviews/">tips for customer development</a>.<br />
<h1>
Prioritized User Stories</h1>
Define the customer problems and beginnings of the solution through user stories (see <a href="http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htm">user stories</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story">user story</a>). Prioritize these stories.<br />
Examples:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.westborosystems.com/2010/02/user-story-examples/" title="http://www.westborosystems.com/2010/02/user-story-examples/">http://www.westborosystems.com/2010/02/user-story-examples/</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Examples" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Examples">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Examples</a> </li>
</ul>
<h1>
Product Feature List</h1>
Create a prioritized high level product feature list (see <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html">Product Backlog</a>). Make sure you look at <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">32 Questions Developers Should Ask a Startup Founder</a> to spark possible additional features. Make sure you keep focused on your key business drivers and prioritize the features aggressively based on those drivers.<br />
Examples: <br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/product-backlog-example/" title="http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/product-backlog-example/">http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/scrum/product-backlog-example/</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/scrumpt/Scrum/guidances/examples/example_product_backlog_B6A03674.html" title="http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/scrumpt/Scrum/guidances/examples/example_product_backlog_B6A03674.html">http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/scrumpt/Scrum/guidances/examples/example_product_backlog_B6A03674.html</a> </li>
</ul>
<h1>
Functional Details</h1>
For the higher priority features, begin to capture additional level of detail of those features particularly focusing on the behavior of the application. See <a href="http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/98328/User-Story-is-Worthless-Behavior-is-What-We-Need">User Story is Worthless - Behavior is What We Need</a> although you don't need your behavior description to be as formal as what is presented. Really this begins to be a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_specification">Functional Specification</a>. Developers don't need everything to be fully documented. Rather are just looking for more detailed description of the features/functions.<br />
Examples (these are going to be more detailed than you need to get to at this point):<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/WhatTimeIsIt.html">Sample Spec</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://getsp.sbisite.com/SBI/IT/Shared%20Documents/IT%20FuncSpec.pdf">Functional Specification Example</a> </li>
</ul>
<h1>
Wireframes, Comps, Clickable Prototype</h1>
Create wireframes for a few key screens that sketch your concept using a tool like <a href="http://www.balsamiq.com/">Balsamiq</a>. <br />
Send across any graphic designs you currently have. <br />
If you happen to have a clickable prototype, that's great. That's fairly uncommon.<br />
<h1>
Other Documentation</h1>
Here are other things you might be told about and try to capture:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)">Personas</a> - Examples: <a href="http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas_eg.html" title="http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas_eg.html">http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas_eg.html</a>; </li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case">Use cases</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements_specification">Software Requirements</a> </li>
</ul>
<h1>
Additional Resources</h1>
Here are a bunch of additional resources<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product">What is the minimum viable product?</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-product-guide.html">Minimum Viable Product: a guide</a>, Lessons Learned, Eric Ries, August 3, 2009 </li>
<li><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product-examples">10 examples of minimum viable products</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://torgronsund.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/minimum-viable-product-revisited-the-mvp-curve">Minimum Viable Product revisited – the MVP Curve?</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/dont_let_the_minimum_win_over.html">Don't Let the Minimum Win Over the Viable</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/12/07/minimum-desirable-product/">Minimum Desirable Product</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.ashmaurya.com/2009/10/how-i-built-my-minimum-viable-product/">How I built my Minimum Viable Product</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.fabernovel.com/en/blog/284-the-death-of-the-wireframe-towards-an-integrated-approach-to-ux-design">The Death of the Wireframe? Towards An Integrated Approach to UX Design</a> </li>
</ul>
You should definitely look at Steve Blank's book and review his <a href="http://steveblank.com/">blog</a>. <br />
Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-29663793110888603622012-12-10T06:59:00.000-08:002012-12-10T06:59:00.823-08:00Technical Advisors: Every Web/Mobile Startup Must Have OneI did a presentation recently for a graduate class from <a href="http://fi.co/">The Founder Institute</a> around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. It was like having a bunch of mini-<a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions</a> all in one room. But what was interesting to me was that I found myself recommending that each of them should have a technical adviser.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-HN1bixd-24c/UMPytWq70kI/AAAAAAAABO8/hzl34hS072Q/s1600-h/image%25255B7%25255D.png"><img align="right" alt="image" border="0" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Ts5e2w1uk_k/UMPytrCs6pI/AAAAAAAABPE/YR5bA6T5RWs/image_thumb%25255B5%25255D.png?imgmax=800" height="179" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: right; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="353" /></a>Why? Roughly, they needed to make sure:<br />
<ul>
<li>Specify the right things to be built. </li>
<li>Third party products are used appropriately. </li>
<li>Structure development contracts appropriately or directing the in-house team appropriately. </li>
<li>Plan for past the initial MVP. </li>
<li>Review the code being built. </li>
</ul>
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm doing as a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/02/part-time-startup-cto.html">Part-Time CTO</a> or <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/technology-advisor.html">Technical Advisor</a> for startups. It just didn't dawn on me how common this need is. And it made me come to a new realization:<br />
<blockquote>
<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">Every early-stage web/mobile/online startup should have at least one technical advisor, probably two.</span></strong></blockquote>
There are two kinds of advisors that are commonly needed.<br />
<h3>
Strategic Technical Advisor</h3>
Look at the business and determine what's going to make sense from a development perspective in the short-term, longer-term.<br />
<br />
They need to be able to know the key <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-have-forgot.html">Questions Developers May Have Forgot to Ask a Startup Founder</a>, figure out where/when/how to bring on development talent (<a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/04/hiring-developers-before-productmarket.html">Hiring Developers Before Product/Market Fit?</a> , <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-hunt-programmers-for-your.html">How to Hunt Programmers for Your Startup - A Field Guide</a>), how to manage development resources (<a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/06/startups-and-common-misunderstanding-in.html">Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development</a>, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/poor-software-developers-pull-plug.html">Poor Software Developers - Pull the Plug Early</a>, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a>), choosing technical frameworks (<a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/06/choosing-programming-language-and.html">Choosing a Programming Language and Framework for Your Startup</a>), and other aspects of making broader choices about what will get developed, how it will be built, and making sure that you ultimately deliver the right stuff at the right time.<br />
<br />
I was very worried for several startup in the room. They were making some significant choices that were going to have lasting impact on their company. Why do this without the right technical advisor? Would you create contracts without an attorney? <br />
<h3>
Tactical Technical Advisor</h3>
There's also a tactical level for technical advisors. We are producing the right functionality, but is the code that's being produced the right product? Is this something that's scalable and extensible? This kind of advisor should be looking at the code on a fairly regular basis to make sure that the team is building the right thing. This is important whether you are outsourcing or building it in-house. If you are outsourcing, then this person will also be protecting you from issues like being able to access the source code and making sure can bring it in-house at a later time. Do you really have control of the development? If you don't have this kind of person and you are not personally looking at the code, then you don't really have control.<br />
<br />
There are some technical advisors who can do both strategic and tactical, but its common to find a tactical advisor separately.<br />
<h3>
CTO Founder - Do they really still need a technical advisor? </h3>
I know relatively few people who are good at both a strategic and tactical level. Most early-stage, in-house teams needs to be hands on developers, not strategic. It's rare to find a person who is good at both strategic level thinking and is still a rock star, cranking out code. Early-on, bring people on who can produce volume. You can get strategy level on a part-time basis. I've talked about this before in <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Startup CTO or Developer</a>. Is this person a CTO or a developer? Likely they will have gaps in one or the other. Get an advisor to help supplement where there are gaps.<br />
<br />
By the way, do you know that most development teams use peer review of code to help ensure good development practices. Who's doing that for your CTO?<br />
<h3>
Where Do I Find a Technical Advisor</h3>
You are looking for part-time people in these rolls so you often are finding people who already are employed somewhere else. In Los Angeles, I have easy access to a bunch of potential strategic technical advisors through the <a href="http://www.lactoforum.org/">LA CTO Forum</a>. If you need a strategic advisor, contact me and I will connect you with someone from the group. Another avenue is looking for CTOs/VP Engineering via LinkedIn. It's going to be a numbers game to find the right person that way, but still quite doable.<br />
<br />
Tactical advisors are also going to be already developing or leading development full-time at a startup. They will have the title Lead or Manager. They should only be a year or two removed from full-time hands on. Ideally they have experience with your full technology stack, but in some cases, having them learn about best practices will be necessary.<br />
<h3>
Compensation</h3>
This is going to depend on the specifics of the work. When advisors need to jump in and spend significant hours on a particular issue, then likely cash compensation is going to be required. If it stays at a few hours per month, then using something like Founder Institute's <a href="http://fi.co/contents/fast">FAST</a> agreement probably makes sense. Just make sure its clear what the expectations are going into any engagement. <br />
<h3>
Why Investors Should Demand This</h3>
I quite often get a call where a founder raised $150K of initial money and has spend $120K on in-house or outsourced development and the software is 90% done. But they are having a tough time getting it all the way done. As I mention in <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a>, the number one reason I get calls relates to an old software engineering adage:<br />
<blockquote>
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.</blockquote>
In the case of these calls where the initial money has mostly been spent, it can be very tough to recover. Most often the failure is both a result of the founder not doing the right things and because the developer over-promised and failed to ask the right questions. Having a strategic and tactical advisor can greatly reduce the chance that this is going to happen.<br />
<br />
What's funny is that once software has been built and you move from Seed to A or B round, I often get calls by investors about reviewing the existing product to see if it has reasonable quality and if the team is going to be able to continue to produce going forward. Why a Seed level investor doesn't insist on a technical advisor, I don't know.<br />
<br />
Bottom line - if you are an early-stage startup with online or mobile technology as part of your solution, you ABSOLUTELY NEED a technical advisor.Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-26070064655055485512012-11-19T09:34:00.001-08:002012-11-19T09:34:25.705-08:00Find and Talk to other Startup Founders of Similar Startups<p>One of the recommendations I make all the time to startup founders, is to find other founders who have tackled similar problems as yours and talk to them about how they solved these problems.</p> <p>As an example, I'm working with two sets of founders who are both going to be dealing with <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/01/getting-started-with-two-sided-market.html">Getting Started with a Two-Sided Market Business</a> - they are variants of two sided markets, but have similar characteristics.  They have both chosen to launch first in a particular geography.  Because their audiences are different, they will take very different approaches to how they do their geography specific launch strategy.</p> <p>My suggestion to both of them is that they should talk to founders (or maybe early employees) who have launched startups with similar characteristics.   You should consider:</p> <ul> <li>Audience</li> <li>Product</li> <li>Strategy</li> <li>Business Model</li> <li>Competitive Set</li> </ul> <p>You probably can't talk to someone at a direct competitor (although ex employees may work), but it is generally easy to find parallel businesses.   Who has launched a similar kind of business?  Ideally they've launched these fairly recently.</p> <p>So who has launched businesses with local focus initially?   Well, there are going to be a ton of these.  Come up with various ideas.  Ask around about others.  But let's just say you came up with Groupon as one of them.</p> <h2>First Stop CrunchBase</h2> <p>Here's the link to the <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/groupon">Groupon Profile on Crunchbase</a>.  Here's some interesting things I can find:</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-KX0CMHAtbXg/UKptkk_4FaI/AAAAAAAAA_g/Hjj8NOGx0G8/s1600-h/image%25255B5%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-JlCFF654_sM/UKptlMAzaiI/AAAAAAAAA_o/R4OvYqrvsPQ/image_thumb%25255B3%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="269" height="551" /></a></p> <p>You can find Founders listed here.  Former people can be a wonderful source of information as well.  See below for tracking down these folks through LinkedIn.</p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-x6H33kbDQXM/UKptlbdk2uI/AAAAAAAAA_w/Dmy3fP-FRF8/s1600-h/image%25255B10%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-q5cUEdvdrN8/UKptmL5lESI/AAAAAAAAA_4/-yvJQxberUI/image_thumb%25255B6%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="242" height="500" /></a><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-vJNqNeVjC2g/UKptmvF4M1I/AAAAAAAABAA/XAfivHN7-3o/s1600-h/image%25255B14%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-n-XSaag3RdI/UKptnPk7z5I/AAAAAAAABAI/jyRRxeaPad0/image_thumb%25255B8%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="260" height="232" /></a></p> <p>Acquisitions and competitors can often yield startups that took similar approach to how they rolled out, had some success.  Worth looking through these for some interesting parallels.  Again look for founders.  And save names of of companies that match your criteria.</p> <h2>Second Stop LinkedIn </h2> <p>Advanced people search in LinkedIn is a beautiful thing.</p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-pH3odQ93GZE/UKptnrI_-xI/AAAAAAAABAQ/4ZptSrP5LuE/s1600-h/image%25255B21%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-nsVqjgcnIlE/UKptoDetz0I/AAAAAAAABAY/vjYgQ5nomSU/image_thumb%25255B13%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="660" height="261" /></a></p> <p>In this case, I'm looking for:</p> <ul> <li>Company - put in the related startup</li> <li>Title - "founder" or "marketing" or nothing</li> </ul> <p>You will come back with some very interesting folks.   My suggestion would be to not necessarily target Groupon itself, but more of the competitors and acquisitions.  In some cases, you can target people who were at one point at Groupon and now have founded something else.</p> <p>Once you've found some people, now its time to reach out.  I've talked about this before in <a href="http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/03/linkedin-prospecting-no-conversation.html">LinkedIn Conversations</a>.  Here are the keys:</p> <ul> <li>Show that you are real and serious.  Funded is a good word to use.  As is being specific about your issue.</li> <li>Be brief.</li> <li>Ask for a brief conversation.</li> <li>Don't use the words "pick your brain"</li> </ul> <p>As an example:</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi Joe,</p> <p>I'm the founder of an pre-launch, funded startup that will be doing a couple local launches to get early traction and determine whether our business model holds.  We have some ideas on how we will launch this.  It looks like you've been through this exact thing before for a parallel kind of business so I'm hoping you can help me.  </p> <p>Would you be open to a brief conversation around this?</p> <p>Tony</p> </blockquote> <p>I like to send these directly, but will do it indirectly through an intermediary when necessary.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-2148989920750315932012-11-14T07:03:00.001-08:002012-11-14T07:03:03.092-08:00CMO CTO COO Equity and Compensation<p>I was just asked about a particular startup situation (seed stage, CMO hire, non-founder) and particularly what compensation and equity is appropriate.  I know a lot more about CTOs specifically <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/04/cto-salary-and-equity-trends-2009-2011.html">CTO Salary and Equity Trends 2009-2011</a>, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/05/visualization-of-startup-cto-equity-and.html">Visualization of Startup CTO Equity and Salary Data</a>, <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2011/02/cto-equity-and-compensation-at-venture.html">Startup CTO Salary and Equity Data</a>, but I've previously written about the issues with <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/09/equity-for-early-employees-in-early.html">Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups</a>.</p> <p>To find the equity numbers that were relevant for the particular person here, I went back through my prior post and looked at</p> <p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/markpeterdavis/vc-bootcamp-by-dfj-gotham-ventures-and-wilson-sonsini-goodrick-rosati">Wilson Sonsini and DFJ Gotham Ventures</a></p> <p><img border="0" alt="[image5.png]" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-DTkZdPtMyFg/Tn3gTPIUggI/AAAAAAAAAtY/CYLreGyA6BI/s1600/image5.png" width="240" height="180" /></p> <p><a href="http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle">The Option Pool Shuffle</a></p> <p><a href="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-OsUfioIIq_8/UKOyoMbbQDI/AAAAAAAAA-A/RZzry7olARo/s1600-h/image%25255B2%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-1oHo9ZCf9t0/UKOyon8xDGI/AAAAAAAAA-I/mcL6eT27z0I/image_thumb.png?imgmax=800" width="239" height="244" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/employee-equity-how-much.html">Employee Equity How Much</a></p> <p><a href="http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/08/how-much-equity.html">How much equity for investors and employees?</a></p> <p><a href="http://blog.weatherby.net/2011/05/seed-stage-compensation.html">Seed Stage Compensation </a></p> <p><a href="http://www.askthevc.com/wp/archives/2007/06/what-are-typical-compensation-numbers.html">What are typical compensation numbers?</a></p> <p><a href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Rk6EEyde38I/UKOyoz5fJMI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/sjFzdQhJ5L8/s1600-h/image%25255B5%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-okhdVuOvUDw/UKOypRYIryI/AAAAAAAAA-Y/KtlxfrNErXY/image_thumb%25255B1%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="244" height="200" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://www.christine.net/2009/08/quick-dirty-howto-employee-stock-option-allocations.html">Quick & Dirty How-To: Employee Stock Option Allocations</a></p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-72767495594665688182012-07-23T07:05:00.001-07:002012-07-24T05:56:26.944-07:00Lead Developer to CTO at a Startup<p>I received a great question via LinkedIn:</p> <blockquote> <p>I'm the founding engineer and working hard to launch my startup.  I seem to encounter a lot of people who want to attach a CTO label to me as I'm the only programmer on the founding team of three.  While I do fill that role at the moment, I'm a little hesitant to refer to myself as a CTO as we still haven't launched a product, acquired a single user, or turned or a penny in profit.  I also recognize that while I am the first technologist on the team, I will not by any means be the last and I'm hoping that subsequent hires will be people I consider brighter and more talented than myself.  This leads to a set of questions:  </p> <ul> <li>What is the role of a CTO in the early stages of a company, and does that role change later on as both the company and that individual matures?  </li> <li>What can I do to best equip myself to step up when the need to officially fill this role arises?  </li> <li>How will I know when the need has arisen?  </li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>I've previously addressed the role of a CTO in early-stages in my post <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/01/startup-cto-or-developer.html">Startup CTO or Developer</a>.  It specifically answers the first questions about role and how it changes as the company matures.  For example it includes the following kinds of things that a CTO should be addressing, but that may not be part of the expectation, time allocation, etc. for a Lead Developer:</p> <ul> <li>How much will it cost to build what we need to build?  How can I control costs but effectively get stuff developed? </li> <li>How can we phase development to balance cost, features, risk, etc? </li> <li>What options do we have?  How do we balance those options?  What makes the most sense for us? </li> <li>Given likely market changes, how will we design and build so that the systems can respond to marketplace changes? </li> <li>How do we need to structure the systems to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition? </li> <li>What are the biggest areas of technical risk?  How can we address this risk? </li> <li>What technology research is required? </li> <li>What technologies will we use?  What existing systems will we leverage, what programming languages, software development methodologies, web application frameworks, revision control systems, etc.? </li> <li>What other kinds of systems will we likely need?  Accounting?  Reporting? </li> <li>What are the important security considerations?  How do we balance concerns vs. cost? </li> <li>Where are the likely future integration points with other systems? </li> <li>What areas of the application are likely sources of scalability issues?  What kinds of spikes in traffic could we have?  How will we address these without significant cost? </li> <li>How are we going to manage the product roadmap?  Make sure we make short-term progress, but not at the expense of longer-term objectives? </li> <li>What do we build in-house or outsource?  What parts might we do off-shore, on-shore, in-house?  What does the staff need to look like over time?  When will key hires come on? </li> <li>What other kinds of capabilities such as graphic design, user interaction, product manager, QA will we need?  Who will do that?  Who’s responsible for what portions? </li> <li>How will we find and interview developers?  </li> <li>How do we motivate and manage developers? </li> <li>What do we need to do to make sure we can survive technical due diligence by investors and partners? </li> <li>What specific technical innovations might make sense? </li> <li>What can we build that might be protectable? </li> <li>What metrics are going to be the key <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/10/startup.html">startup metrics</a> and how do we get those metrics without too much cost? </li> <li>Where and how will we host the systems?  What’s our purchase, licensing, SaaS strategy? </li> <li>What other CTOs can I ask about complex questions to see how they’ve addressed these issues? </li> </ul> <p>If you are a Lead Developer now and want to grow into a CTO role, there's some good news and bad news.  The good news is that many of the founders that I talk to who are trying to find the lead developer want someone who can grow into the CTO role.  The bad news is that there are a couple of things working against you making the transition.</p> <p>Startups tend to focus on immediate development needs, getting product out the door, and are often short-sighted.  Then the Founder/CEO and the investors wonder why the above questions are not being addressed.  They attribute it to lack of knowledge and skills rather than focus.  Result => "We need to bring in a CTO."</p> <p>Startups either grow or die.  If the startup lasts into a few rounds of investment, the rounds get larger, and the team grows.  A skills gap will emerge.  The lead developer who's used to leading a team of 3 will have a much different job trying to lead 40.  In fact, it's likely the case that it's better to keep the lead developer leading a small team to get product out the door.  It's also the sad fact that there's often a desire to bring someone in who has a bigger reputation and likely experience with larger startups that have gone through M&A or IPO.  Again, both of these will lead to => "We need to bring in a CTO."</p> <p>There are definitely cases where the lead developer grows into a CTO.  However, I will say that there are MANY cases where the initial lead developer does not turn out to be the CTO of the series C/D startup.</p> <h3>What can you do to position yourself to make the transition?</h3> <p>Here's a dirty secret about most startups.  Unlike some larger, more mature organizations, most startups don't spend much time or effort helping grow their employees beyond the immediate needs of the startup.  Whatever the startup needs in the near-term is what the focus will be.  When they recruit you, they should tell you about what you will learn, but it will be focused on technologies and skills that they immediately need for the success of the business.</p> <p><em>In the world of startups, it's critical that each person takes responsibility for managing their own career.</em></p> <p>But that's most often not the case.  In <a href="http://g33ktalk.com/how-to-level-up-in-your-career-as-a-startup-software-engineer/">How to Level Up in Your Career as a Startup Software Engineer</a>, Pete Soderling points out something that's a bit of a dirty secret in the world of startups:</p> <blockquote> <p>Many startup software engineers don’t take proactive steps to manage their careers.</p> </blockquote> <h3>Learning, Networking, Mentors</h3> <p>From the question, this person is clearly looking at the issue of how to grow into this role.  Likely one of the bigger challenges is simply not knowing what you don't know.  Towards this, I believe you need to seek out continuous learning opportunities.</p> <p>If you are the senior most development leader, often there are organizations locally that you can get into where you can meet peers.  Here in Los Angeles, it's the <a href="http://www.lactoforum.org">LA CTO Forum</a> - a private, invite only group of 250+.  The brain power of this group is amazing.  And it's quite common for people to get together outside of meetings to discuss issues they face and/or to seek a kind of mentoring relationship.  Finding an informal mentor or two would be a great way to be able to continue to focus on this and make sure you are caught unaware.</p> <p>This group may be a bit unique, but in every geography there are lots of industry and technical organizations where you can seek out similar kinds of people.  You could even use LinkedIn.  I believe you will find lots of CTOs quite willing to help you as a mentor.</p> <p>In addition to networking, I would suggest that formal learning is a great idea.  This can take the form of a local university, online courses, going through relevant books, etc.  The key here is to begin to avoid technology specific content and instead focus on management skills.  This is likely your bigger gap.</p> <p>If you are seeking to ultimately be the CTO of a larger startup, it may make more sense to join an existing larger startup and learn from that CTO.  The size of the startup makes a huge difference in terms of the challenges the CTO faces.  </p> <p>Make sure you are continuously looking at the business and customers.  Get in front of customers as often as you can.  Engage heavily on the business and product.</p> <p>Allocate your time differently so that you focus on the issues that a CTO will be looking at:</p> <ul> <li>strategy </li> <li>communicating options and influence rest of leadership team </li> <li>build/grow/direct/motivate team </li> <li>financials/budgets </li> </ul> <p>You'll note that a lot of the skills and focus of a CTO are around communication, business, management, team.  This is often a major factor in determining that transition.</p> <p>I'd be curious what other advice people have.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-58778557492748816012012-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:002012-06-26T08:01:00.087-07:00Startups and a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development<p>I've done four <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/03/free-startup-cto-consulting-sessions.html">Free CTO Consulting Sessions</a> in the past month with startup founders who all had run into variations of the same problem.  They didn't feel they had visibility into timelines and costs for development of their software.  They couldn't plan their business.  Investors and early customers were becoming worried about the ability of the founder to deliver.</p> <p>In three of the cases, the founder was finding that the software teams (1 in-house, 2 outsourced) were delivering relatively well in the short-run.  The teams involved didn't seem to be exhibiting many of the <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Symptoms of a Weak Development Team</a>.  The primary problem was that there always seemed to be a lot more that needed to be accomplished such that the big picture of what needed to get built was going very slow as compared to expectations.     As one founder put it:</p> <blockquote> <p>We keep iterating over relatively the same features and functions.  We are finding and fixing bugs.  Making small changes.  But I'm now 4 months in on a release that was supposed to be done in 2 months.  And we are not even moving yet on the the next big release that I have to have to get my next round of funding.</p> </blockquote> <p>In the fourth case, the founder was getting ready to sign a very large contract, but they didn't feel they had much visibility into what was going to be delivered.  Instead, what they had was a contract that promised Agile Software Development with Rapid Iterations and an incredibly vague list of features.  My belief is that you shouldn't sign that contract.  You are just setting yourself up for problems.  Actually, you are setting yourself up to be in the situation of the two founders that had outsourced.  They had both signed similar contracts and I'm not sure what's going to happen because clearly the outsourced developer is not delivering on the contract in terms of big picture features and functions.</p> <p>In all four cases, I would claim that what's at fault is a common misunderstanding in Agile Software Development.  In particular, there's a tendency among many people executing an Agile process to focus on the short-term (Sprints, Iterations) and to forget planning and other big picture aspects.  There are many different Agile Software Development methodologies, but just about all of them have a strategic level element that focuses on the larger picture of the product.</p> <p>Below are some pictures of Agile Development and you'll notice that each has a starting point of the big picture.</p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-1xfWxy9S4Y0/T-ceNKQhgRI/AAAAAAAAA4U/HelFYhac79s/s1600-h/image%25255B14%25255D.png"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-i8xQFvXdxBU/T-cePIRdHyI/AAAAAAAAA4c/wzOZ8l5BBvk/image_thumb%25255B8%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="560" height="688" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-iwMrLz6kvxM/T-ceP-pNiiI/AAAAAAAAA4k/sAHJMOfOZxI/s1600-h/image%25255B9%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/--_1wMpT6oHI/T-ceQzlk08I/AAAAAAAAA4s/Mv8Gskb1MRo/image_thumb%25255B5%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="420" height="425" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-JGYYc5svslw/T-ceRXoYPuI/AAAAAAAAA40/FuFenxYKg-w/s1600-h/image%25255B4%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-u85ZCFvUa4M/T-ceSBiz1wI/AAAAAAAAA48/xFnNoEKAT-A/image_thumb%25255B2%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="560" height="322" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-wHBR5HxHWEA/T-ceSQOOcJI/AAAAAAAAA5E/xS9yTaCDXJQ/image%25255B29%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="537" height="452" /></a></p> <p>No matter what a developer implies or acts like, there is planning in their Agile methodology.</p> <p>Of course, what's really at issue here is:</p> <ul> <li>How much time/effort should be spent defining things that are farther away in terms of development? </li> <li>How do we avoid continually iterating on a small set of product features/functions and lose progress on the bigger picture? </li> </ul> <h3>Level of Detail</h3> <p>So how deep do we need to go on features that are farther in the future?  Enough to have an estimate of the scope of the item.  I can hear the groans from all my fellow technical folks - we hate estimating things.  So why do I say this.  If you can't estimate it, then it's not defined well enough and you are just punting on getting it defined.  I'm not saying the estimate has to be exact, but a reasonable range is needed.  </p> <p>I'm okay with splitting functions off into near-term and future.  A classic example might be "reporting" as a feature item.  What probably will happen is to define some early reports that will have more specific estimates.  Then as it gets into the distant future (12+ months out), it can be much fuzzier.</p> <p>Why do I need this?  We are trying to establish the big picture over the next 6 months.  And we are using them to set expectations around what's going to happen in terms of the product.  If we don't force ourselves to the level of an estimate, we can't really do that and we'll have big time misunderstanding on what's going to get done.</p> <p>For most early-stage startups the list of product features that are under consideration for a 6 month (or even a 12 month) period is not that big.   We are likely talking about an effort of 4 hours to 2 days.  In all four of the cases that sparked this post, the founder and the developer were willing to just put a single bullet item on a list (yes, "reporting" was a line item on one of them - ouch) that could have wildly different expectations and they clearly had not estimated these things.  In three of the cases, these were in contracts!  Of course, even for the internal development team, this is pretty much a contract with your founder.</p> <p>You don't need a lot of documentation of these items.  I personally like the Product Backlog type approach, but with more functional description than user stories (that can be more open to misunderstanding by developers).  For example you might be capturing these first in user stories and then into a feature level spreadsheet that link back to the user stories.</p> <p><a href="http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/scrumpt/Scrum/guidances/examples/example_product_backlog_B6A03674.html"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-ueF3xvyymGk/T-ceTkqHGxI/AAAAAAAAA5M/RVCO_Pb06x8/image%25255B22%25255D.png?imgmax=800" width="520" height="502" /></a></p> <p>You can also look at:</p> <p><a title="http://www.mitchlacey.com/intro-to-agile/scrum/the-sprint-backlog" href="http://www.mitchlacey.com/intro-to-agile/scrum/the-sprint-backlog">http://www.mitchlacey.com/intro-to-agile/scrum/the-sprint-backlog</a></p> <p>and there are tons of examples out there.  You will notice that all of them contain high-level estimates along with priorities.  This level of understanding only takes a few hours of time to get through.  Yes, it might be hard work, but you need to do this or you are setting yourself up for the kind of long-term misses that this post is about.</p> <p>Unfortunately, there seems to be lots of confusion out there around this issue.  Part of this is confusion on terminology around various Agile methodologies and terminology.  But a big part of the problem is one of attitude.  A <a href="http://agileconsortium.blogspot.com/2011/03/scrum-and-release-planning.html">great post</a>, Joe Little starts with acknowledging that Scrum and Agile proponents often downplay upfront planning. </p> <blockquote> <p>... drowned out by Agilists saying "why do you want to do up-front planning?"</p> <p>... all we 'scrumers' hate up-front planning</p> </blockquote> <p>Joe points to reasons why proponents of Agile may try to avoid upfront planning including that things will change, so the initial dates/budgets are quickly wrong.  But Joe then goes on to point out why it's needed even with the negative attitude that Agile developers may bring:</p> <ol> <li>Help the business make decisions</li> <li>Team can see bigger picture and understand the tradeoffs</li> <li>Helps scope down early releases</li> <li>Team understands the whole project</li> <li>Leads towards Re-Planning</li> </ol> <p>Also, take a look at:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://tcagley.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/agile-release-planning-is-a-necessity/">Agile Release Planning Is A Necessity</a></li> <li><a href="http://herbjorn.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/when-to-agile-and-how-much-to-agile-that-is-the-question/">When to Agile and How much to Agile – that is the question</a></li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Design_Up_Front">Wikipedia - Big Design Up Front</a></li> </ul> <p>The bottom line here is that neither the developer nor the founder/business owner should be willing to dodge upfront planning and getting to the estimate level.</p> <h3>Endless Iteration</h3> <p>The other problem that is being experienced is that each week the teams are setting the priorities to focus on bug fixes, small changes/new features around the same basic feature set and not getting to the next set of product backlog items.  </p> <p>Okay, so part of this is a function of the quality of what is being built.  If there are a lot of bugs and each bug fix is causing new bugs, then it could be back to a <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">Weak Development Team</a>.  In these three cases, I would say that while I would have expected fewer bugs coming through the process with better development of test scripts, the overall symptoms were not horrible.  Most of the "bugs" were edge cases that were not really thought about until after the product was pulled together.   </p> <p>The bigger part of this was that the business owners were defining additional features and functions that were needed now that they saw the system running.   In two cases many of these were coming from customers using early releases.  Some of these changes were important, but the critical question that I raised was:</p> <blockquote> <p>What is the priority of these items vs. your product backlog items?</p> </blockquote> <p>Many of the incremental changes and quite a few of the bug fixes were lower priority than moving on the product backlog.  </p> <p>Why were they stuck in Endless Iteration?</p> <ol> <li> They had not accounted for the maintenance and support that comes with release.  If you start with an unrealistic picture of what's going to happen as you begin to release, you are going to create a big disconnect between your initial plan and what happens in practice.  As a developer, certainly as a CTO, you need to account for setting those expectations appropriately. <br /></li> <li>They had not gone through a Re-Planning effort - mostly because they really didn't do any upfront planning.  If you look at Joe Little's last point about the value of upfront planning, it's setting you up for Re-Planning.  In these cases, not only did they have an unrealistic picture of what was going to happen once the software was released, but they continued with their pattern of not planning.  So instead of asking the priority of small changes vs. product backlog, they just sat in an endless iteration / maintenance mode.</li> </ol> <p>I would also say that by starting into a process where you don't do big picture planning as you should, it shouldn't be a surprise when you are not making progress against the big picture.  You've established that the big picture is not as important as small increments and the team will align with that model.</p> Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-28545359317162265792012-05-22T08:22:00.001-07:002012-05-22T16:17:58.775-07:00Los Angeles Startup EventsI recently posted about the <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/05/startup-surge-in-los-angeles.html">Increase in Early-Stage Startup Activity in Los Angeles</a>. In that post, I mentioned how one of the signals is the big increase in number of startup events and the number of attendees at those events. I realized that it has been a little while since I posted about the <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2011/05/los-angeles-startup-community.html">Los Angeles Startup Community</a> and so needed to update my list of startup events that will be out of date almost before I finish publishing it.<br />
<h3>
SoCal Startup Event Calendars</h3>
The following three sources are great at finding a lot of the startup events going on in Los Angeles and SoCal:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.socaltech.com/calendar/calendar.php">SoCalTech.com Events</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://techzulu.com/events/">TechZulu Events</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://startupdigest.com/los-angeles/">Los Angeles Startup Digest</a> </li>
</ul>
Even with all of those, they still often don't have all of the different meetings, especially smaller events listed. So, you may also want to go look at:<br />
<h3>
Los Angeles Startup Events</h3>
Here are some of the events and meetups that I've <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2012/05/startup-cto-speaking.html">spoken</a> at, attended or at least interest me. Of course, given the size of this list and having kids, I really can't attend a lot of these. So, if you happen to read this and want to meet me, just reach out directly.<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://founderdating.com/upcoming/los-angeles/">Founder Dating Los Angeles</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://lademoday.eventbrite.com/">LA Demo Day</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://startupsuncensored.com/">Startups Uncensored</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Tech-Cofounder-Dating-LA/">Tech Cofounder Dating Los Angeles</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.vokle.com/series/26201-tech-coast-angels-open-forum">TechCoastAngels Online Events</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Venice-Entrepreneurs-Meetup/">Venice Tech Entrepreneurs</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Downtown-StartUps/">Downtown Startups</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/LA-Startup-Nights/">LA Startup Nights</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://santabarbara.startupweekend.org/event/">Santa Barbara Startup Weekend</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://techzulu.com/announcing-silicon-beach-fest-june-21-23/">Silicon Beach Fest</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Beach-Start-Ups/">Silicon Beach Startups</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://la.startupweekend.org/">Los Angeles Startup Weekend</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.hollywoodhackday.com/">Hollywood Hackday</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://la.startupweekend.org/">Startup Weekend Los Angeles</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.latechhappyhour.com/">LA Tech Happy Hour</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/SoCal-TIES-Trendsetters-Innovators-Entrepreneurs-Startups/">SoCal Biz Orange County</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/StartUpLA/">Startup LA</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://la.meetup.fundersandfounders.com/">Los Angeles Funders and Founders</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Santa-Monica-Entrepreneurs-Network/">Santa Monica Entrepreneurs Network</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/">LeanLA Startup Circle Meetup</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://entforum.caltech.edu/upcoming.html">CalTech Enterprise Forum</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://socialmediaweek.org/losangeles/">Social media week Los Angeles</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.dealmakermedia.com/">Dealmaker Media</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.socialmediaclub.la/">Social Media Club, LA</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/scalela/">LA Scalability Group</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/LA-HUG/">LA Hadoop User Group</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/">Dorkbot SoCal</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://g33kd1nner.com/">Geek Dinners</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://web.meetup.com/34/">LA Web Application Developers</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/phpdev/">LA PHP Developers</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetup.com/laruby/">Los Angeles Ruby/Rails Group</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.tcosc.org/">Technology Council of Southern California</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.entforum.caltech.edu/">CalTech MIT Enterprise Forum</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.techbizconnection.org/">TechBizConnection</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.aitp-la.org/">AITP-LA</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.awtsocal.org/events/">AWT So Cal</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://digitalla.net/">Digital LA</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://www.exectec.us/">ExecTec</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lava.org/">LAVA</a> </li>
</ul>Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7120556183800964088.post-60668004445138883182012-05-21T08:47:00.000-07:002013-04-18T12:49:14.189-07:00Startup CTO SpeakingOver the past several years, I've done lots of presentations around a wide variety of topics. I was recently asked by an organization, "Tony, what topics can you cover?" I realized that I've never captured topics that I've covered (I'm always willing to look at other topics), nor have I put up my speaker bio. So, here goes:<br />
<h3>
Dr. Tony Karrer </h3>
<a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-_jFnBPTGH84/T7kEWq-VYhI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/vQR-xeJGqtk/s1600-h/Karrer-Tony-large-portrait%25255B8%25255D.jpg"><img align="right" alt="Karrer-Tony-large-portrait" border="0" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-24ZyhgS-ubY/T7kEXNBz3cI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/cypxekDbBK8/Karrer-Tony-large-portrait_thumb%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" height="204" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; float: right; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="Karrer-Tony-large-portrait" width="138" /></a>Over the past 15 years, Tony has been a <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/02/part-time-startup-cto.html">part-time CTO</a> for more than 30 startups. Most notably, he was the original CTO for eHarmony for its first four years making him partly responsible for more than 4% of the marriages every year. He's also led significant technology projects for a very impressive list of companies including Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, HP, Sun, and the list goes on. <br />
Tony has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and taught computer science for 11 years. He is a frequent speaker at trade and industry events. <br />
<h3>
Select Startup CTO Speaking Topics</h3>
<h4>
</h4>
<h4>
Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP</h4>
<h4>
<span style="font-weight: normal;">So you think you're ready to start building your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? Many non-technical founders miss documenting key features when communicating with their development team. In this presentation, Tony Karrer, a well known CTO for early-stage startups including eHarmony, will take you through the keys points you should consider before building your MVP such as: </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Features often overlooked when documenting an MVP for developers; </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Considerations when implementing social features; U</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">nderstanding important metrics you want to measure; </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Risks and challenges in developing an MVP.</span></h4>
<div>
<b>Building Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Are you a founder who’s got a great concept and needs to get the product built? In this class, Tony Karrer, a well known CTO for early-stage startups including eHarmony, will take you through the keys to successfully getting your mobile/web product built.</div>
<h4>
Technical Advisors: Why Every Startup Needs Two, How to Find and Work with Them</h4>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
After talking with several hundred startups over the past few years, there is a clear need for technical advisors to help specify the right things to build, make sure development is done right, plan past the initial MVP, review what is being built and generally cover gaps in the technical strategy and tactics. Tony takes startups through the why and how of technical advisors. Don't do a startup without them.</div>
<h4>
Ten Lessons from Working on 30+ Startups Over the Past 15 Years</h4>
Tony looks back over his experience working with startups and extracts elements that have led to success or failure. Many of the factors are not obvious and include building mystery to drive margin, why boring B2B companies often win but are challenging in other ways, how bootstrapping wins, integrating metrics from the start and many other similar lessons.<br />
<h4>
Startup Feedback Panelist</h4>
Tony has participated on many panels where he can provide real-time feedback to startup founders. Startups provide introductions and Tony and fellow panelists provide feedback in real-time. These are exciting and fun experiences for everyone involved.<br />
<h4>
Evolving Role of Social Networks for Startups </h4>
In this talk, Tony traces the evolution of how startups have leveraged social networks and social media as part of their solutions over the past ten years. Tony provides specific models and suggestions for how startups can leverage social networks for viral growth yet maintain their independence so as not to limit themselves long-term. <br />
<h4>
Matching for Startups</h4>
Having been involved in eHarmony from the start, Tony has naturally consulted with startups who are making <a href="http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2010/04/matching.html">matching</a> a core aspect of their product including matching for social networks, careers, clothes, jobs, projects, college, tutoring services, doctors, service companies, investments, and many more. As the web has led to exposure of every increasing numbers, people need ways to filter the possible options. In this talk, Tony looks at where and how matching algorithms can be applied to give significant value to startups.<br />
<h4>
How Startups are Winning by Wiring into 3rd Party Services and Data</h4>
Probably the biggest change over the past 15 years in working with startups is the availability of 3rd party services that can be leveraged as part of a solution. Its common for startups to think about services like hosting/computing, storage, analytics, maps, email delivery and tracking, and eCommerce. However, there's really been an explosion of services over the past few years that gives even greater leverage and opportunity. Possibly even more interesting is the rapidly growing data sources. In this talk, Tony first looks at the landscape of 3rd party services and data. Then, he explores how several startups have leveraged those services and data in interesting ways. He ends by looking at how this might help startups in the room.<br />
<h4>
Why Software Development Goes Bad So Often and What You Can Do About It</h4>
Most likely you've heard the staggering statistics on failure of software projects with different reports showing 28% success rates. Tony is often called in after projects have reached a critical situation to try to help fix the problems such as blown budgets/schedules, poor quality code, never quite getting the last 10% done and other <a href="http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html">symptoms</a>. Unfortunately, for startups, the situation is often dire. Development dollars have been spent and the system is not going to be able to be used for the business.<br />
As a Startup, you have one shot. What are you going to do to reduce your chance of problems and maximize your chances of real success? What is the root cause of all of these problems? How do you know if you may have issues? What parts Agile addresses and the big problems with Agile for early-stage startups?<br />
This presentation may make the difference between success and failure in your startup.<br />
<h4>
Metrics-Driven Startups</h4>
Virtually every startup has a model that has critical aspects to it that will make or break the business. What is our lifetime customer value and how can we drive that up? What does it cost to acquire a new customer? What is our viral spread coefficient? <br />
The key for most early-stage startups is to understand the core metrics for your business, ensure you have visibility into those metrics, and then optimize the business around those metrics. In this talk, Tony talks about the importance of these metrics for you and your possible investors, how startups typically gather these metrics without spending a fortune on reporting, and provides examples from eHarmony and other startups that may surprise you.<br />
<h4>
Stupid Things Founder Say - How to Work More Effectively with Techies</h4>
Software developers and other technical people are part of a very interesting club that has its own language, very specific rules, secret handshakes and, yes, they definitely talk behind your back and laugh at things that you say. Unfortunately, once you've lost the respect of your technical team, it makes it hard to get work done and frankly becomes frustrating. If you are not part of the club and don't speak the language, how can you work effectively with them?<br />
Tony has been bridging that gap for 15 years with companies of all shapes and sizes. In this talk, he helps you understand what you might be doing wrong today and how to change things to work with techies more effectively by understanding their motivation and getting yourself smart enough on critical items.Tony Karrerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15408035995182843336noreply@blogger.com2