For this paper, we want you to reflect on what you've learned through taking COS 448 that has given you new insights or new ways of thinking and approaching issues. In particular, you will examine different issues that typically come up in technology companies and describe what you might do differently now, compared to if you weren't exposed to the material discussed in COS 448. We recommend that you pick one specific real company as a "main company" for your paper, and answer most topics in the context of that company. If, however, a different company is more appropriate for some topics (either another real company or a hypothetical company you had chosen for this class), you are welcome to use it instead. Some of the topics don't necessarily need to be aligned with an existing company (e.g. "Starting a Company"). What's important is that every topic should have appropriate and insightful specific examples and discussions.
We recommend the following five companies as choices for "main company". You can select a different company if you like:
- Google: Larry Page recently replaced Eric Schmidt as the CEO. Since Google doesn't have a CTO, if you are picking Google, you will assume the position of Larry Page. Google operates the most successful ad network, which generates almost all of its revenue. Google has historically struggled in the "social networking" space and is hoping to focus more in that area. Other product lines include Mobile (Android), Video (YouTube), Browser (Chrome), etc.
- MySpace: MySpace once was the largest social networking website (approx. 100 million users, compared to 34 million today). Amongst other things, it was successful in promoting young singers and pushing original online music. MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising, and is a social networking content publisher. Currently, it's parent company News Corp. is rumored to be looking to sell MySpace. Employees and top executives are leaving and the company badly needs a reboot.
- DropBox: Dropbox makes it easy to securely share files with other people, and sync them across multiple computers, using cloud backends. Dropbox was founded in 2007 and is considered one of the more successful recent startups recently. In 2008 it attracted millions of users and has recently found business opportunity in the enterprise software space (not originally its target market).
- AOL: AOL has been fairly active in making acquisitions recently and solidifying its position as a content publisher (recent acquisitions include TechCrunch and Huffington Post). AOL is having a difficult time making enough money online outside of its declining subscription services business (dialup, broadband). In addition to content/media, it has an in-house advertising division as well.
- FourSquare: FourSquare is a location based social networking application. In its last round of (USD 20 million) funding, it had a USD 115 million (post-money) valuation. They recently released version 3.0 of their product and are hiring aggressively.
The topics are given below. For each topic, discuss not only what you would do but especially what are the main areas where you would do things or think about things differently now, than you might have had if you weren't exposed to the material discussed in COS 448. This may be based on things you learned from lecture, from guest lectures, or from reading. If there's no difference, you should explain why:
- Starting a Company as CTO: Assume that you will start a company after graduating, for which you are the founding CTO. The issues you may discuss here include, but are not limited to, getting the founding team and initial employees together, distributing equity, raising money, structuring things, etc. Please select topics that you feel are most important for the early days of starting a company.
- Joining a Company as CTO: Assume that instead of starting a company, you are joining an existing company (startup, mid-sized or large) as the CTO. What are three main things you would choose to focus on up front? How would your choice of these three things be different now than it might have been before, and how would your approach within them be different? You may pick any types of areas you like.
- Technical Decisions: How will you affect technical decisions in your company. Many of the key technical decisions will be your call anyway, but what "internal process" will you generally follow when deciding between competing choices? Examples you can discuss may include, but are not limited to, choice of programming language for development, choice of data store for storing information, architectural choices, choice of tools for data analysis, etc. Feel free to select any example(s) to explain your approach, as long as it a (highly) technical decision, and you feel that it's important for the success of your company. Remember to include all necessary technical details in your example(s). Please don't only pick choices where the choice is obvious (though some of those are fine to show what you've learned), but also choose ones that expose interesting tradeoffs and why you would make one choice and not the other.
- Business Decisions: The technology organization or side of the company should have a seat at the table in business decisions. As CTO, what general process will you argue to put in place or follow to influence business decisions? Examples of such decisions you can discuss may include, but are not limited to, shutting down a service, pivoting the business in a new direction, proposing new business partnerships, etc. Feel free to select any example(s) to explain your approach, as long as this is about business (and not technical) decisions.
- Organizational Growth: How will your approach to organizational growth be different. Examples you may discuss include, but are not limited to, hiring and integrating a new engineering team for a new product, making management structure changes to make it more efficient, what you look for in executive hires and in 'rank-and-file' hires, etc. Feel free to select any examples(s), as long as they are specific, and please communicate your approach clearly.
- Politics and Culture: As CTO, you observe that there is a lot of politics in the company. That is, many people are basing their decisions and behavior on personal advancement and the growth of their team and responsibility, rather than what is best for the company and its success. People are being negative about others to you as well, about other executives' performance as well as about their 'political-ness'. You think it is extremely important to change this culture fast, or it may destroy growth and success. How would you go about doing this? What steps would you take, or what processes would you follow to affect such change in culture/behavior, and how would you respond to people when they come to you with these complaints about others? And what would you not do? How is your approach different after taking the course.
- Product Design and Development: When designing and developing new products and/or services, what are the most important areas you would take into account early on versus later on, and what are steps that you consider important in taking an idea from design to implementation? How is your approach or the issues you include different after taking the course. If not different, please explain why. Select one product or service for this part and ground your discussion around that specific product/service. Please make sure to communicate the high level principles, while talking about the specific example. The product design may also include any relevant details on the technologies needed to implement or the technical infrastructure needed to run the product/service.
- Metrics: What 3-5 business metrics (Key Performance Indicators or KPIs) and what 3-5 technical metrics would you consider most important for your company? Which of them do you think would be easiest to measure quantitatively and which most difficult? Please be brief in your explanation of metrics, and comment on which metrics would not have made the list if you didn't take the course.
- Mergers and Acquisitions: Pick one out of the following two situations. a) You are CTO of a company, and you and the CEO are considering being acquired by a larger company. What are the key elements of your role -- as CTO -- in the acquisition process. Please give specific examples to explain your role. b) You are CTO of a large company, working with the CEO or the M&A team to consider acquiring a technology startup company. What are the key elements of your role -- as CTO -- in the acquisition process. Please give specific examples to explain your role. Whichever situation you pick, please comment on what are the things will you watch out for (after taking the course) and how will you ensure success of the product/service/business after the acquisition.
- Overall. What are the 3-5 biggest lessons you are taking away with you from the course about being a CTO or being a leader at the boundary of technology and business. This part can have an overlap with Writeup #10.
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Submit 16:59 EST on Tue 05/10 |
