Harnessing Experience at a Fraction of the Cost

As a startup, one of the most important decisions you can make is ensuring you have access to experienced technical leadership. While hiring a full-time CTO can be expensive, there’s a better alternative than going it alone: the fractional CTO.

Five Years of Giving Dangerously

Who Cares if it Scales?

Across the country, in every accelerator, exec team meeting, advisor session, and board meeting, startups are asked the same question:

“But how will it scale?”

My answer: “Who cares?”

Startups: You Don’t Need a CTO (Yet)

GiveFirst

Our friends at Name.com recently learned that Community Ministry of Southwest Denver, a community food and clothing bank, is about to lose its building and needs to find a new one. They leapt into action, launching a campaign to raise $800,000 through their #GiveABuck program. Their idea: a lot of people giving even a small amount can accomplish amazing things.

To raise awareness, company videographer Jared Ewy is creating a series of silly videos mimicking some of the top viral trends to tell people about the campaign and send them to the fundraising site CMSWD Rocks to make a donation. In his most recent effort, Jared invited a number of Denver tech community members, including our CEO, Jason, to join him in a carpool karaoke version of “I Will Survive.”

As Jason says, never let your pride get in the way of serving a good cause. And he didn’t.

Just over a year ago, I embarked on a crazy experiment: I wanted to see if I could make a living by giving. Not investing in startups, not donating a portion of my time and money to a cause, just giving. After reading Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take, last summer, I decided to take the “Give First” idea espoused by Adam, Brad Feld, David Cohen, and others to its logical extreme. I would give first, second, and third, then give a little more, without requiring any equal trades in return, and see what happened. I wanted to see if Adam was right, that people respond to generosity with generosity, that the majority of “matchers” in humanity want to lift givers up while bringing takers down. I’d already seen what takers could do and I was not impressed. Now I wanted to see what a giver could accomplish.

Spoiler: it’s a lot.