The Future of Tech Depends On Upskilling Your Team
Original Article Featured in Entrepreneur.com. When my company began, we were decidedly generalists. We didn’t specialize in any one industry or technology, and we saw ourselves as a technology company that was reasonably skilled at building apps for mobile devices. Things were good for a while, but competition in the technology world made us wonder about […]
Dogtown Media Discusses Changing Careers & Building Teams at General Assembly
On February 27th, we had the awesome opportunity to discuss career transformation and how to build a great team at General Assembly’s Downtown Los Angeles location. For a 45-minute panel and 30-minute Q&A session, Justin Hall, our senior iOS Engineer, Kim Calderone, our UX and UI designer, and Marc Fischer, our CEO and co-founder, got […]
3 “Easy” Startup Roles, and Why They Aren’t Actually Easy
Engineers can dismiss designers as frivolous and unskilled. Designers are just as likely to dismiss engineers as tasteless code monkeys. Everywhere you look at an NYC mobile app company, you’ll find plenty of opinions about which roles are “easy” in a tech startup. This can be incredibly frustrating for team members when other people on […]
What Is the Role of a Non-Technical Startup Founder?
Non-technical startup founders often get a bad rap in the tech world. This is partly because there’s simply a scarcity of quality technical talent — and partly because many non-technical founders try to jump to the top of the ladder without proving their value. Take a look at Hacker News, Quora, Reddit, Medium, or anywhere […]
How to Market Your Startup for Maximum Discoverability
If you figured acquiring loyal users for your app would be cheap, brace yourself for a reality check. As of December 2016, user acquisition costs for iPhone app developers have soared to over four dollars — twice as much as the previous year. The situation isn’t much rosier for San Francisco Android app developers, with […]
How to Make Hires as a Non-Technical Founder
Whether you’re an iPad app developer looking to hire a designer or an entrepreneur looking to hire a coder, finding and vetting talent is no easy task. Especially when the specialty you’re hiring for is something hard to judge like backend coding, how can you be sure you’re hiring the right person for the job? […]
Conversion, Statistics, Data: It’s All about Happy Users
Communication between PMs, developers, and designers can at times resemble a peace summit between three tribes, with each speaking a different language and holding different ideals. In a recent post to Medium, Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo proposed a few ideas to help project managers and iPhone app developers mesh with designers. Among those […]
How Much Equity Should Early Startup Team Members Get?
In a particularly emotional segment of the popular podcast Startup by Alex Blumberg, two co-founders discuss how much equity each party “deserves” based on their skills and contribution to the company — and the huge disparity in what each considers fair almost tears the team apart. The scene is particularly powerful because, rather than discussing […]
Discovering Startup Talent at the Knapp Venture Competition
A mobile app that brings employee engagement to the cloud. Revolutionary medical devices for spinal cord injuries. Year after year, UCLA Anderson students participating in the annual Knapp Venture Competition create positive-impact startups that have a huge effect on the community. We’re honored to be on the panel judging this year’s startup pitches, and Dogtown […]
Why You Need a Co-founder and Where to Find One
Partnering with a capable co-founder may not be a requirement, but it’s strongly suggested by leading venture capitalists. Investor Paul Graham famously listed single-founder team structures as one of the leading causes of startup failure. Any iPhone app developer can tell you that the road to startup success is challenging emotionally as well as logistically, […]