Tag: getting started

Jonno Southam leads Venture Capital (VC) business development for AWS in Europe. He is also an Amazon ‘Bar Raiser,’ a role dedicated to maintaining the high hiring bar. Here, Jonno shares his thoughts on the hiring process and his experience at AWS.

Hiring the right people for your startup is one of the most important things that you will do as a founder. Beyond finding product/market fit, it’s probably the most important thing that you’ll do. Before joining AWS, I’d interviewed and hired a bunch of people as the CEO and Co-Founder of the live event startup Shortcut. Amazon, however, is the only employer that has actually taught and trained me how to properly interview and hire. I’d now like to share some of those lessons here because I think they are critical and particularly applicable to startups.

Work with enough startups and you’ll inevitably witness (or experience) the unexpected departure of a co-founder. So how do you protect your company, prevent disruptions, and make sure you can get moving forward again if a founder leaves?

Designed with startup founders and technical staff in mind, the AWS Startup Day series was created to help accelerate startup innovation and growth and we’re excited to be bringing the event to London for the first time.

Life after founding a company comes with lots of options. As an entrepreneur, you’ve learned what it means to scale, that execution is paramount, what it means to be scrappy and that resilience is half the battle—all important skills that make you valuable to any number of companies. While a minority of founders know that they immediately want to start a new company, most need time to step back, grieve (if necessary), and evaluate what there is to do after thinking about one business exclusively for any number of years.

And there’s more help available from experts to get your application to the YC Spring/Summer? 2018 Class dialed-in.

After you have created your first AWS account and applied security best practices, you may next want to start tracking your AWS costs so that you can stay within your budget. With AWS, you only pay for what you use, which results in a variable cost model, much like a utility bill. The more you […]

By Drew Russ, VC BDM, AWS Drew Russ, AWS Startup & Venture Capital Business Development Manager, held sessions at the AWS Pop-up Lofts in San Francisco and New York that covered the basics that a founder needs to know about venture capital. From the definition of VCs to mechanics and bargaining, the discussion served as […]

Maybe I’m the only one that gets annoyed by this, but it drives me nuts when a five-person startup gives everyone a Chief ____ title. I don’t think it’s needed if all five founders are experienced and with prior successful exits.