FreelanceCTO » hiring

Three Types of Technology Teams

John Shiple — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:00:19 +0000

Every company or product can be built using one of these three team configurations:

Internal: best, but difficult to build
External team: cheapest, basic tech needs
Hybrid team: for mid-range tech needs

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Three Insights for Evaluating Your Tech Team’s Performance and Behavior

John Shiple — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:00:17 +0000

It’s simple! Seed, Feed, and Weed!

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Do You Need a Full-Time CTO?

John Shiple — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:00:16 +0000

Not everybody needs a CTO. How do you know if you need one? Analyze your business along the following lines:

Determine the amount of commodity technology used
Issue of time to market
Capability to utilize external resources

This will help you determine if you need a full-time or part-time CTO.

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Developer or CTO? Pay or Partner? Which is Right for Your Company?

John Shiple — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:00:13 +0000

For a variety of reasons, many people assume that they need a CTO for their company. This is not always the case. Before moving forward with your quest for a CTO, review the following:

Determine the level of commitment needed
Developers are paid; CTOs earn equity
Budget is a key factor

Are you capable of paying a developer or CTO their market rate? Or are you looking for someone (a partner) to make a commitment in time and equity to your endeavor?

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Tips for Hiring Technical People

John Shiple — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:00:22 +0000

Both business and technical people must interview candidates for skills, smarts, and culture. You just go about it a different way, depending on your background. Here are my tips for hiring technical people:

Hiring practices differ from business & tech standpoints
Tech standpoint: culture, smarts, skill
Business standpoint: skill, smarts, culture
Seek help if you’re unable to evaluate skill

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Need to add User Experience expertise to your business or startup?

John Shiple — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:17:54 +0000

I have extensive experience growing and nurturing UX within organizations and building UX teams. The most successful companies that I have built have *always* had a strong UX role in them. I view this position as critical to launching a killer product.

User Experience Team Triangle

UX is best done by applying a Behavior-Structure-Presentation triangle (see diagram above) to the team or skills required to launch a product. It is a multi-disciplinary approach. Behavior is responsible for the code and various engines that drive the product (think flow diagrams and functionality lists). This can be driven by engineers who know design and production like the back of their hand. Presentation can be handled by designers who know engineering and efficient production of assets, mockups, and wireframes. Structure is handled by “Producers” (a dated term, which really is now more like a Product Manager,Information Architect, Copy Editor, or HTML production jockey) and relies on these people understanding design and engineering intuitively.

Finding the one person with these skills is possible but very hard to find. People like Jaime Russell, Chris “freeform” Miller, Jeff Veen, and Mike Kuniasvky are the gold standard in this type of situation. Check out Mike’s books on UX. Quite good.

UX is best applied as a framework. Startups need to leverage multiple types of expertise in individual people where larger companies can easier afford to acquire this role in one person. If you can find a well-balanced UX person who is strong in the above 3 dimensions (Behavior, Structure, Presentation), you are good to go.

STARTUPS: Want "FREE" Developers to build your product?

John Shiple — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:43:32 +0000

I meet a lot of startups that are looking for that perfect developer who will buy into their vision (aka “drink the KoolAid”) and work for equity (i.e. “for free”). Well, that’s not going to happen. I mean it can…but that’s like winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning – you can’t plan for it.

Yet…there is good news! There are a lot of low cost alternatives (in Los Angeles) that may be of interest to you: Internships, Incubators, Contests, and Outsourcing.

Internships

Students4Startups (S4S) might work for you. For a lot of startups, though, I’m not sure if it is a good fit. Your company needs to be able to strongly manage a junior technical resource. S4S also shies away from companies interested in “free work” as it’s the wrong type of message and is not a strong foundation for internships or first-time jobs (and I seriously question the cultural DNA that you are creating with this attitude). If you do have the capability to manage a technical intern, then it is possible for a startup to get a for-credit (aka “free”) intern, but you must satisfy these criteria:

From http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm:

The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;

The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;

The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;

The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and

The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

For the record, I have *never* found a Computer Science (CS) student who will work for school credit. All of them want to be paid. And if it’s an internship, by law, you must pay at least minimum wage (~$12/hour). So, the cost of a CS intern is really $12 to $20/hour (or more, but I haven’t seen interns go above $20/hour yet). S4S has more info on internships.

If you are a graduate from USC, UCLA, or Caltech, I *strongly* recommend that you connect with the CS student groups and begin attending their events. That’s the best way to meet students – in person and informally. That’s how you can meet a technical peer to join you as a partner.

Outsourcing, Incubators, and Contests

Here are several more low cost methods for building your product or company. Some are free…most are not (by having a money, opportunity, or time-related cost):

Partner with a local outsourcing firm. There are several local outsourcing shops that have a track record in working with startups. They may do work for less fees that can be made up in deferred compensation or equity. Not sure how they’ll react to a zero budget, but they may be able to work with that. Your mileage may vary, but if you have a good idea, and a track record, you may get a local outsourcing shop to build your prototype. Contact me for recommendations.
Enter the idea in the StartupWeekend LA contest and win (or any startup building contest). You can get funded out of participating or winning a contest like this. Also, lots of “free” labor to build your company! It’s not quite like that, but these are typically great events and worth considering.
Enter the idea in a Twiistup, Spotlight: LA Tech or Fast Pitch event (there are many of these) that has an actual cash or funding reward. TCVN Survivor 6 is a good example of this…Joey Flores, of earbits.com, won TCVN 6 and get $50k in services and a big PR and Marketing boost.
Join an incubator like IdeaLab or Y Combinator. I have an awesome Y Combinator story that I can’t tell anybody about yet (hopefully in the next 4 weeks).
Start hanging out at the CoLoft 2 days a week. Great startup environment. Lots of techies come by, too. Lots of meetups. Good way to be about as close to the heart of the startup storm as you can be, in LA.

This is more than enough to get you started on low- to no- cost options. I love talking about this stuff, so don’t hesitate to kick-off a conversation with me about it.

(FYI: This is written with the SoCal region in mind but may apply anywhere).

Technical Networking Groups and Meetups in Los Angeles

John Shiple — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:32:31 +0000

Check out this long list of groups and meetups in Los Angeles! We kick ass! There is sooooo much to do in this town now!

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Cloud Camp LA
CoLoft
DevOps
Digerati LA
Dorkbot
Founders Space
High Scalability
LA Cloud Computing
LA CTO Forum
LA Flash Users Group
LA Hadoop Meetup
LA JUG
LA LOPSA
LA Machine Learning
LA Startup Nights
LA Tech
LA Web Application Developers
LA Web/Mobile Software Entrepreneurs
LA.RB
labillions
LAMPsig
LAVA
Lean LA/Lean Startup Circle
Los Angeles PHP Developers
OCTANe/FIRSTY
R users group
SoCalTech
Spotlight LA: Tech
Startup Digest
Startup Weekend LA
Students4Startups
Technology Council of Southern California
TechZulu
Twiistup
UUASC-OC

What have I forgotten? And yeah, I know 1 or 2 are duplicates (LA Hadoop Meetup = High Scalability, methinks).

Start a company in Los Angeles…now!!!

John Shiple — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:01:14 +0000

Fast Company has a great article on why you should start a company in Los Angeles.

Since 1994, I have spent about half of my time in the Bay Area and the other half in Los Angeles. LA beats the Bay for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that Los Angeles focuses on building viable businesses, whereas the Bay Area largely focuses solely on technology…for the sake of technology. Los Angeles has a lot more opportunities in a number of very large-scale verticals, which means a wider variety of work and types of work for tech workers than the Bay Area. Speaking of industry verticals – Entertainment, Advertising, Automotive, and Lead Generation (to name a mere few) are all based in the Southern California area. And of course, there is the weather!

Networking for Techies and Developers in Los Angeles

John Shiple — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:53:02 +0000

My friend Mark Long recently asked me about networking in Los Angeles. Mark is a CTO, see, and his company, PortBlue, was recently acquired (congrats, Mark!). After transitioning to the new team, Mark was left to wonder, what now? Where do I need to go to meet the people that I will “build the next big thing for”?

This past couple years, I have been doing a ton of networking. Rather than write something just for Mark, I thought I would let everybody else know what the good, tech-oriented networking events are in Los Angeles.

For the tech-oriented networker, there is one primary thing to keep in mind: Know the target audience for each event that you are interested in. Early in my networking days, it was easy to find a tech event — there weren’t any. As a result, I went to many “Internet” related events that really were not technical at all. It took me a little while to figure out the difference between entertainment meetups, advertising events, marketing conferences, and even fashion shows (did I mention that I am a Technologist?). There is a difference between these events, and it pays to know. With the onset of many more tech events in LA, it is in your best interest to attend the non-technical events. How are you going to find work otherwise?

Here are the technical events in LA that I enjoy. They range from over-the-top nerdfests to C-level shindigs at fancy-shmancy hotels. All of them are great events for different reasons. I will start with the highest level and work my down to the nitty-gritty of the tech trade.

For Business, Strategic, and C-level events, I strongly recommend these two events:

LA CTO Forum – This is a private community of CTOs in the southern California area. I love this group – what a fantastic resource! Only alpha nerds can get into this community.
Dealmaker Media – My first DealMaker Media event was Startonomics (a fantastic event). I would attend every Dealmaker event if I didn’t have to pay so much to attend them. Pick your topic wisely, if cost is a concern to you. You will meet great people at these events.

For meeting interesting People, Companies, and Startups, I recommend the following events:

Digital Family Reunion – DFR is a descendant of the VIC (Venice Interactive Community), LA’s first Internet networking group. If any event has the old school “movers and shakers” of the LA scene, it’s this one. DFR is the perfect blend of people from all walks of (Internet) life. There is a DFR event this month, September 2009.
Startups Uncensored – Follow Jason Nazar’s ramblings on his blog to stay up to date on what is probably the most popular (free) networking event in LA. The show kicks off with a great presentation (different every month) and then heads over to Docstoc‘s headquarters for even more, intense networking.
Social Media Club, LA – SMC events have a nice mix of people ranging from entrepreneurs and marketers to developers and community managers. At the first event that I went to, the first person that I met became our first client. Social Media is big in LA, and SMCLA is at the center of the storm.
Twiistup – Twiistup is kind of like LA’s answer to the TechCrunch50. Companies enter and vie for the grand prize. This event can be hit or miss. It’s either really, really good or downright awful.
Mindshare LA – Mindshare is where Art meets Science. I have never been to one of these events, but it’s first on my list for new events. It sounds really cool

And now…the nerds!! Here is where the nerds are in LA (in order of my preference):

Builders and Doers – First a little BSP (Blatant Self Promotion), I started my own high-end, nerd meetup called BaD. It has the highest signal to noise ratio of any pure-tech group that I am in. You should start a small tech meetup of your own!
LA Hadoop Meetup – My good friend Mark Jeffrey’s company, Mahalo, typically hosts these events. They are *super* nerdy. This is the nerdiest meetup that I have ever been to in LA.
Dorkbot – This is where the hardware and software DIY nerds go to play. It’s in Silverlake, so it’s a bit of a haul, but the events are fun. And who doesn’t like getting tasty beer through a hole in the floor? (trust me…just go)
Geek Dinners – I first went to a geek dinner about 2 years ago. That’s when the light finally clicked: “AT LAST! There is tech networking in Los Angeles!”. It’s a good mix of people.

Finally, here are some tech-specific events that I have not yet had the pleasure of attending. I can’t speak to their quality, but all three of them come highly regarded by my peers. I will be attending all of these events in the very near future.

LA Cloud Computing – This is a new meetup. I’m not sure how good it is, but I am certainly going toCloudCamp LA 2009.
LA Web Application Developers – I have not been to this event yet, but all the top techs that I know speak very highly of it. It’s only a matter of time before I attend.
LA PHP Developers – Again, I haven’t been yet, but it’s a very big group and has been recommended to me several times. The group’s size has me concerned about the quality of discussion, but I’ll learn that for myself firsthand.

Mark, I hope this helps. I have a few more goodies up my sleeve, but this is your basic blueprint to tech networking in the LA area. Enjoy…and let me know when you get your schmooze on!

Happy Hunting,

-=John