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Category: startups

Don’t use Recruiters to hire Engineers

Don’t use Recruiters to hire Engineers

A job or two ago, I was under pressure to hire up a team of engineers, but the CEO wouldn't let me use a recruiter.   While there was some short term pain associated with that directive, it was the best move in the long term.  Once I learned to recruit on my own, I found better candidates and I found plenty of them.  My CEO was right.  He made me break my recruiter-habit and I'll never look back. Recruiters Read the article >>
Engineering-Led Organizations

Engineering-Led Organizations

I am pleased to be joining Occipital this summer as an engineer on their web team.  I have a long history of friendship with the co-founders of Occipital -- Vikas Reddy and Jeff Powers.  They went through Techstars in 2008 the same time as Ignighter -- the team I with which I went through Techstars. Occipital makes (among other things) the Structure Sensor -- a device that allows iPhones and Read the article >>
Startup Basics: 5 Steps for Productive Meetings

Startup Basics: 5 Steps for Productive Meetings

I've noticed a meeting anti-pattern and I need to get it off my chest! It's when a meeting chair hasn't set their meeting up for success. Thoroughly preparing for a meeting conveys respect for a teammates time.   Here are some maxims that I've adapted to my own flavor of meeting logistics: 1. The best meeting is no meeting If you can resolve the question via email or via a 10 minute phone Read the article >>
Foundations of Leadership #2: Become an Expert in Something

Foundations of Leadership #2: Become an Expert in Something

I've never seen someone rise in an organization as fast as when they become an expert in something important to that organization.  There something organic about leadership that occurs because an engineer is the subject-matter expert in a piece of scope that the rest of the organization is betting on strategically. I've seen engineers be most successful at this when It's a subject they Read the article >>
Foundations of Leadership #1: Say what you’re going to do and then do it.

Foundations of Leadership #1: Say what you’re going to do and then do it.

If I could name *the* one most important quality of a potential team member, friend, or pretty-much anyone I am going to bring into my life, this is it: If you say you're going to do something, you go do it. It's such a straightforward principle. And yet, crazily enough, people (even professionals) don't always follow through on their committments.  Maybe people commit to things they don't plan Read the article >>
Create Virtuous Cycles within Startup Teams

Create Virtuous Cycles within Startup Teams

One thing that I've seen in Simple Energy's culture over the last 6 months that is very exciting to me is watching firsthand the virtuous cycles that happen in enthusiastic teams. If I try to decompose the contributing factors to this, based upon my experience at Simple Energy, into their own discrete tenets, I think it would look like this: Culture Have fun together. Values must be Read the article >>
Boulder Startup Week 2015 — Data Science Track

Boulder Startup Week 2015 — Data Science Track

I am running the data science track of Boulder Startup Week  (May 11 - 15th ) this year.  We have 4 events on the docket: Insights Tooling & Architecture Data Visualization Data Scientists Happy Hour If you are in town and would like to attend, click on the event links above to RSVP.  If you would like to speak (format is 5-10 minute presentation + 5 minute Q&A, 4 presenters Read the article >>
A Ping Pong Table is Not Your Culture

A Ping Pong Table is Not Your Culture

A Ping Pong Table is not your culture. Free food is not your culture. Giving team members Macbook Pros is not your culture. Free yoga classes are not your culture. Free Jawbones, iPods, and tablets are not culture. Culture is a reflection of what you reward and punish.  Culture is your values.  It is how you enable your team to be succesful, how you rally around your mission. Good Read the article >>
Call for presenters — Boulder Startup Week 2014 Dev Track

Call for presenters — Boulder Startup Week 2014 Dev Track

Boulder Startup Week is May 12 - May 16th this year. I am running the dev track. The session are as follows: All about Functional Programming - Functional programming relies upon the fact that we can define an entire system in terms of a pure, atemporal, stateless mapping from inputs to outputs, and this fact holds for us a singular promise: that it is possible, and desirable, to write programs Read the article >>