131–140 of 152 posts
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No, product shouldn't be the head of an engineering team.
So you're argueing "prototyping greenfield projects and exploring innovative ideas" is something that should come solely out of engineering with no Product input?
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Companies do not make the world better.
The company that made my robot vacuum cleaner definitely made my world better.
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You forgot to account for the 100+ employees. The liquidity event would have helped their families as well.
I won’t disclose details out of respect for the other party, but no, not necessarily. As I wrote, it was a good deal for the founders and some investors, but not for everyone, including employees. There are many ways to structure a sale, and unfortunately not all of them split the cake equally.
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The company that made my robot vacuum cleaner definitely made my world better.
No, your robot vaccuum cleaner itself made _your_ life better. The _company_ made _the_ world worse, by over-charging, exploiting, and polluting. The fact that they happened to create a product that you personally enjoy does not negate the overall negative effect.
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The entire submission is about someone who doesn’t want to be acquired even at “the right price”. You don’t have that option when you take outside investors.
Not at all, we believe the asset is worth a lot more :)
I don't know the specifics of your company so I can't give you valuation advice, but I'd just like to add that, in my experience, I've seen lots of C-level teams and Directors refuse to sell even when a great offer was on the table because they believed they were worth more. In numerous cases, it turns out they were wrong and the company either fizzled out or sold to a different buyer a year or two later for much less than they could have gotten.
I'm talking refusing a $3.5 billion offer because you think you're worth $4B, only to sell for $2B later.
Not every deal is a good deal, but remember as an insider who's built the company you're also likely somewhat biased. There's nothing morally wrong about selling if it is quote-unquote "the right price".
I can't really name names in public, but email is in profile if you ever want to chat
This guy is going to end up offing himself when the company slowly goes to zero and he could have had 400 million.
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Nokia had exactly this kind of CTO office during the 2005 - 2012 years when they lost the entire smartphone market. The CTO fiddled with greenfield projects that had no path to products while the house burned down. The best that can be said about it is that inventions outside of the product helped beef up Nokia’s patent portfolio, which played a role in the company surviving the post-phone years and transforming into…
well you say that, but blackberry did exactly what you're saying Nokia should have done and we see how much that helped. Truth is iPhone was so far ahead technologically, no other company had a chance. At least Nokia still exists today, which can't be said about majority of other mobile phone manufacturers of that era.
Android changed all that, all of the sudden all their competitors got a good OS for free. Commoditize your complement, Google took their markets.
I kind of want to be a CTO somewhere. So much bureaucratic stuff to become one though. You usually have to be someone's friend or start a company yourself.
If you enjoy building its kind of a pain in the ass. I've been the CTO twice in my career, and am in a pure engineering role now and get a lot more satisfaction out of my job.