Show Me The Money! Managing Technology Investment
summary
Panel explains how VCs evaluate tech with concrete benchmarks: a firm managing $5 billion fund investing $3M–$50M, early rounds under ~$20M and growth rounds >$100M, software’s near-zero marginal cost driving winner-take-all bets, and a scale example where a 3,000-person org produces a 420-line features-to-P&L spreadsheet to prioritise roadmap vs technical debt. Covers kazoo’s seed-to-IPO pivot to profitability, open source as non-core acceleration, and when fractional CTOs are acceptable.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction and panel setup
- 4:13Startup funding stages explained
- 6:20CTO impact across company stages
- 11:58What investors look for in CTOs
- 17:37Open source in business strategy
- 22:51Balancing MVP and technical debt
- 29:47Communicating tech value to non-tech teams
- 32:55Tech due diligence insights
- 35:49Product vs service-based startups
- 37:57Ambitious vs realistic targets
- 40:44CTO role in tough funding markets
- 41:48Board budget decision dynamics
- 42:33Closing remarks and Q&A
