John's Blog

When Marion reached out to me about E.Factor I have to admit and initial reluctance.  I blog on a regular basis already, enjoy relationship building on Twitter, and have a full time role as VPE and CTO at Swimfish.    If you doubled the number of hours in the week I might get my eight hours of sleep.

However, when I checked out the E.Factor site and took a closer look I decided that joining this community, sharing my experiences, and of course my opinions, made sense.  I have spent the last decade working in, and growing,startup companies.  Throughout that time I have worked at:

• Brainshark (http://www.brainshark.com).  The company started back in 1999 and I joined as the 8th or 9th employee.  Helping build that company, which is still very successful, was an incredible experience.  While my role was simply that of Director of Engineering I learned a lot from a great executive team and will never forget the people and the experiences.
• Sonicbids (http://www.sonicbids.com).  I joined the company as their CTO and enjoyed growing the team, helping acquire funding from VCs, and working in a very interesting marketplace, focused on musicians and helping them make connections with promoters ranging from MTV to Joe's Bar and Grill. 
• Swimfish (http://www.swimfish.com).  As the VP of Engineering and CTO I am once again focused on building Enterprise-scale SAAS solutions and, in many ways, starting over again.  While the company has been in business for years we're transitioning from a company that was primarily services driven to a company that is primarily product development driven. 

While I will continue blogging on my other site (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com) I will also be writing here on a weekly basis.  I'll keep myself focused on a variety of topics which will include:

• Hiring in startups
• Leadership challenges in startups
• Thoughts on growing from startup to established business
• Engineering thoughts for those of you focused on SAAS-based solutions.

I look forward to engaging with as many of you as possible as social communications should be built on rich, two-way communication.  I'll keep up my end of the arrangement, looking forward to you doing the same.

John