Here's one of many things you won't learn in that class: NAT traversal http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-r... Not to mention tuning compression in real time for network properties, echo cancellation, audio/video synchronization, volume leveling, helping users find each other, and privacy settings. I've never done a streaming project and those are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there are more interesting problems as well.
All valid parts of the general problem, but I think most multimedia networking courses talk compression, QoS, jitter, adaptive protocols, etc . . .
While in no way attempting to say that these issues don't exist or are trivial, what I'm driving at here is that bi-directional video didn't spring fully formed out of the ether yesterday. I saw these issues as part of a multimedia networking course 10+ years ago.
Of course, there is also a ton of research still going on in this area, so it's not like the canonical answer has been found at this point either . . .
Yes, there are many problems/things one "should" know, but how many of them are essential for an MVP? More to the point, the fact that there are some "essential for MVP" things that you can't do doesn't mean that you shouldn't work on the "essential for MVP" stuff that you can do.
And then there's the "not product development" stuff.
There is always something that one can do to move forward.
The problem to me is that the technical parts of a tech startup are usually more than 50% of the company. Maybe it is even 90%. You write the blog post and pose as if you had something. What did you have really? If getting this guy was critical to success and the reason you moved, I think you should focus more on how in the heck you got into the position to consider moving in the first place, i.e. a combination of bad advice from investors that weren't good advisors and you taking that advice. The critical mistake happened when you decided to move out there, not because of the red flags you mentioned. Those were secondary imo.
Actually finding investors and advisors and getting them on board with the project is a big deal. And apparently finding a good CTO takes a lot of time and effort as well.
All valid comments -- I think that ultimately team is the most important, followed by product, which is why I moved, and we were basically doing a reset. We had stuff without him, but I wanted to build the company around him/me rather than the team we had...but agreed in part, for sure
Or does bi-directional video streaming mean something different that what I assume?