The management tag has no wiki summary.
16
votes
13answers
2k views
Can a non-developer/non-technical manage developers?
Any positive/negative experiences? Advice? I personally feel that my professional life as a developer is now more difficult, it feels harder to explain things and also to prove my worth without being ...
10
votes
15answers
1k views
Employee abusing sick leave
We have a very important employee at our startup who has been consistently abusing sick days. Unfortunately being a small company we would have a very hard time replacing him at this point but his ...
9
votes
2answers
530 views
Software Sales & License Billing for Small Startup
I have just started a small software startup and one of my current headaches is the management of licenses that we sell / lease...
I am looking for a system that can manage the billing and contact ...
8
votes
7answers
280 views
Creating camaraderie among people who never see each other
I have a team of people scattered across time zones and the world. Most of these people have never been face-to-face with even one of their colleagues. Most have never heard anyone else's voice. We ...
7
votes
8answers
547 views
Is there a market for yet another Project Management tool?
I have the ambition to build a Project Management tool, that has visual analytics capabilities. I have successfully tested the concept of my idea 3 times. But before putting all my effort into ...
7
votes
5answers
708 views
What are the best books to learn project management for a start up? [closed]
I was wondering which books are the best to learn good project management techniques to successfully run a startup.
6
votes
6answers
191 views
How do you manage ideas (engineering changes) in a start up?
I'm involved, as a software developer, in an early stage (pre-profit) start up. The product is at a point where the basic core is implemented and we are building out features and adding polish, so ...
6
votes
3answers
390 views
How do I calculate how much my hour is worth?
I run a software development company (mostly potential so far, not amazing amounts of income). I am often in doubt of how much I should spend in order to save one of my own working hours. I know that ...
5
votes
4answers
225 views
Running a dating site - Use volunteers for administration - how to keep them motivated?
I'm running a dating site and I have 3 volunteers working on the administration (approving photos, profiles, removing stalkers, etc). The problem I'm having is that they are, as volunteers, very ...
5
votes
3answers
130 views
Holiday gifts for employees
I am pretty bad with gifts and in the past years I was awarding monetary bonuses to folks who work with us. I am not particularly keen on the idea of bonuses mostly due to the fact that we can't quite ...
5
votes
3answers
1k views
The Startup-CEO Roadmap - What's the best approach for being a great startup CEO?
At best it's a tough job and at worst its an impossible job. I've hear experienced CEO's complain about investors that "they love you 'til they hate you". Over the course of a number of CEO gigs or ...
5
votes
4answers
134 views
Any great book on how to talk to people, especially to a person who seems not to get along with you [closed]
I want to read some great books on how to talk to people, how to handle people's unfriendly comment non-defensively, how to turn a potential quarrel to a friendly and pleasant talk. I know there is a ...
5
votes
5answers
351 views
How do you develop a startup without personally having the skillset to launch/execute it?
We are a team of 4 individuals (1 idea guy, 2 developers, 1 finance) working together to create a online communication platform website. Since the idea comes from me I formed a team of people who ...
5
votes
1answer
184 views
Field Service Management
I need to manage going door-to-door to 700 properties. I need to be able to account for each property whether they require my service. Then I will need to provide that service every 2 weeks. I've ...
5
votes
2answers
194 views
Tool for reseller management
We have a web application we want to start selling on a per month basis.
We have several resellers that we would like to have resell our application and make a margin on doing so.
We don't want to ...
4
votes
7answers
1k views
How can I best utilize AdWords to test product ideas?
In order to test interest in a product, I've been told that its useful to use AdWords. What's the best way to maximize the usefulness of AdWords. How do I measure whether or not an idea is useful? ...
4
votes
4answers
3k views
What to look for in a Chief Operating Officer?
What traits/requirements should we look for in a successful COO? (We are in software development)
As someone who would maximize the output of our development teams, our COO would oversee multiple ...
4
votes
2answers
164 views
Rules of good email communication
What are the rules of good style in business email communication, regarding timeline of message exchanging?
I mean, how fast the incoming message should be answered? What are the most possible delay ...
4
votes
4answers
646 views
CEO Compensation
What is the average CEO compensation for a start-up - salary, bonus(es), sign-on, equity, benefits? Where can you find this information?
4
votes
1answer
215 views
How to go ROWE (result only work environment)?
Even though we are a startup and heavily leaning on result-only work environment model, I noticed it's really hard to do this correctly, we still do have core hours and so many similar stuff and so ...
4
votes
3answers
389 views
I want to start an investment club
Ok gang, your input will be greatly appreciated here.
I have convinced 4 of my friends and relatives to join me in founding an investment club ( a la private equity or VC)
the idea is very simple: ...
4
votes
6answers
429 views
How do I manage my time as my startup grows?
I am in between blogging daily and running a new expansion to the blog where we expanded into a new social network, this means managing features, launches, marketing, PR etc. what are the best tools ...
4
votes
6answers
882 views
How do you manage employee holiday requests?
I'm currently doing some research into how companies manage employee holiday requests for a startup I'm considering.
So, my question is:
What do you use to manage holiday requests, and what systems ...
4
votes
5answers
429 views
Best way to conduct a private beta of an application?
I have an app which I'm looking to start in private beta testing soon, but I'm needing an application/cms to allow me to manage it (i.e. hand out codes, provide tickets, help centre). Any ideas? ...
3
votes
3answers
179 views
How to recover from the loss of a project?
I had a project where I had employed 25 people, and the client took back the project. Now all the employees are completely idle.
Any suggestions for how I can cope up with the sudden loss? I am ...
3
votes
3answers
161 views
What type of employee do I need?
My SaaS company consists of myself (founder and developer), another developer, and a support person. Our new app is starting to gain traction, and as a result, I'm on the phone with potential / new ...
3
votes
2answers
327 views
Looking for advice on developing my skills as a CTO
I'm currently in the process of building a startup with two co-founders (both are business people). Since I've been a developer in a wide-range of technologies I'll handle the CTO role.
This won't be ...
3
votes
8answers
190 views
At what point do you cut features?
I have a couple of features in my product that are really important but, as it stands, are not fully implemented / designed or integrated.
At what point do I remove them from the product?
I know ...
3
votes
3answers
95 views
What business model “frameworks” are available to help lead/manage a business?
As the FAQ for this site notes:
Topics include financing, hiring employees, legal, marketing, sales, compensation plans, banking, payroll, benefits, and more.
There are a lot of different but ...
3
votes
2answers
181 views
E-Myth Revisited - how does it apply to an ISV startup?
A few people have recommended the "E-Myth Revisited" book to me (and its on Joel reading list IIRC) and it gets very consistently good reviews.
...
3
votes
3answers
205 views
What are good books on management and organization to excel as a startup COO?
Preferably specifically targeted for startups in Tech/IT.
I seem to find a lot about large corporations, but very little good literature about scaling from a small/midsize into a large corporation, ...
3
votes
1answer
159 views
How to structure even number of board of directors?
We are in the process of setting up a board structure for our startup. Everybody on the board will have their own veto rights on important matters, such as capital injection, spending limits, getting ...
3
votes
3answers
230 views
How do I pull this team together again?
I'll try to keep this as brief as I can. Recently I have taken up a position within a big agency where I am responsible for an 'innovation cell'. People can voluntarily join this cell and they get to ...
3
votes
1answer
118 views
What are techniques to elicit requirements from customers who don't understand their needs?
Question:
How do you prevent a situation where you have to produce work-product work first and get client feedback before getting on the right track to meet their needs?
Are there techniques to help ...
3
votes
2answers
708 views
How much revenue share vs equity?
I am bidding to manage the commercialisation of some technology, and based on my daily rate and approx days to complete Stage 1, I would normally ask for $x in cash and remainder of my fees as equity ...
3
votes
4answers
316 views
How important are risk management plans to startups?
I've been reading about startups and entrepreneurship, and the resources that I've liked the best (the lean startup camp) don't seem to address risk management planning.
I'm wondering if formal risk ...
2
votes
9answers
357 views
How to Guide the Amount that Employees Work?
I run a well-funded startup. We're fortunate to have built a kick-ass team with a great product and good early traction. But I worry that our team's work ethic is sliding into stasis. Most of my ...
2
votes
5answers
566 views
Using a Staffing Agency - Is it a Bad Idea?
If you've exhausted your personal network (and friends' networks), and now need to hire people who have skills that you don't have, would you try working with a staffing agency?
I've heard a lot of ...
2
votes
5answers
272 views
Do investors require a mangement team? What if there isn't one?
From an investor point of view, the cliche is "investor prefers type A management team with a type B product rather than the reverse".
A startup cannot afford CFO, CEO. Founder has to roll up the ...
2
votes
3answers
276 views
Identifying failing and bad start-up companies (for sofware developers)
I recently caught up with a former colleague, a mid-level software developer. For the last year, he has been at a failing (badly), self-funded, single-owner software startup.
According to him, the ...
2
votes
6answers
695 views
What is a good free Business management software?
I'm starting up a lawn mowing service, and I want to know if there is any free software, where I can track sales, customers, expenses ect.
It doesn't need to be feature-crazy as my business will be ...
2
votes
5answers
291 views
Won't an operational manual incur many competitors?
I read the book*The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It*. It is said that we should treat a business as a system, as a money-making machine. We should have ...
2
votes
2answers
256 views
Who are some of your role model startup leaders?
Who comes to mind when you think about extraordinary leadership behind a startup? What qualities make them stand out to qualify?
2
votes
2answers
126 views
Could the following be a good way to manage a large business?
As a consultant for large corporations my startup is considering recommending the following:
Imagine that you have a large business with several thousand employees. Usually such a business has ...
2
votes
1answer
113 views
Manage Business Name while keeping Personal Brand
I am going to start doing freelance web development starting in the next couple of months, but on the side I a going to work on some software to put forth in a SaaS model. I would like to do ...
2
votes
2answers
114 views
What is a standard practice decision model for a new parent company?
I've been working for a few years in a small IT consulting company. Recently, I came up with an idea for a software product (unrelated to the company's core business), presented it to the board, and ...
1
vote
4answers
391 views
How do I motivate someone who values his time significantly more than money to come to work on time?
I'm looking for a strategy to negotiate punctuality with an employee who is quite skilled. However, I fear that docking his pay may not have an impact because he values his own time more highly than ...
1
vote
2answers
232 views
The startup I work for is slashing my last pay periods paycheck without notice
This question is not directly related to a creating or running a startup, but I guess this is one of the things that can happen at a startup and I'd love to hear responses from both sides of the ...
1
vote
3answers
1k views
What employee turnover rate is too low for a high-tech company?
There is a lot of focus on the cost of employee turnover in companies. I am curious to know whether there are any studies on failure-rate of high-tech companies increasing if the turnover rate is too ...
1
vote
5answers
215 views
How do you manage risk in a venture?
What are the types of risk that one can encounter in a startup? How can you manage or cope with uncertainty? How can you minimize risk?
