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Startup CTO or Developer

TechEmpower SaaS

What does it mean to be a CTO for a startup? Should a startup CTO spend their time programming? Here’s a graphic from Socal CTO that illustrates the roles as they change over time: In its earliest days, a startup’s top need is often to produce a product. Founder-Developer Gap How big is your startup’s Founder-Developer Gap?

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5 Interesting Learnings from Okta at $2.5 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

Founder CEO Todd McKinnon was VP of Engineering at Salesforce and left to start Okta in the depths of the last downturn. Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2.

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What were 5 distinct milestones that you encountered on the road to becoming a CEO?

SaaStr

For me, it took a while to build up the experiences and confidence to get there: First, I worked with enough startups and CEOs to “get it”. I had a chance as a startup lawyer working in “Silicon Valley” to work with 20+ startups. Second, I joined the best startup that would have me, as a Director and then Senior Director.

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Surprising Trends in Startup Founder Equity Stakes

Tom Tunguz

Earlier this week, I wrote about the increase in cash compensation and decline in equity grants to VPs of Engineering and Product in startups. The graphs are broken out by last Series of investment (A, B, C and D) and show the equity compensation trends of CEOs, VP of Engineering and VP of Product.

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Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot: From Day 0 to IPO. What Went to Plan. What Most Certainly Didn’t (Video, Podcast + Transcript)

SaaStr

One is, lots of folks that have been through the startup cycle, you have this extrapolation from a single data point problem, which is, “OK, we have this story. Another piece of very, very good startup advice that I’ve given myself a hundred times is the “Do one thing exceptionally well.” This is what we did.

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PODCAST 65. The Framework to Deliver Exceptional Customer Success w/ Kim Rose

Sales Hacker

With Conga, you can simplify documents, automate contracts, and execute e-signatures so you can focus on accelerating sales cycles and closing business faster. I remember talking with the VP of Engineering (at Carbonite) and basically saying, “Look, I’m sure I’ll figure it out. It’s a fantastic show.

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Engineering Your Own “Luck”: The 3 Key Rules of Building Globally Distributed Teams with Eventbrite (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

I started right at the end of 2011, and I started in the role of VP of engineering. Every year, 15% of our engineers who were in the company left the company to go do something else; Startups, go to Facebook or Google, whatever it was they left for. I had one year of Spanish in high school.