Evolution of my role as a founder CTO

Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by jgrahamc on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @11:32AM (#25347498)

My suggestion would be no one should be CTO at the beginning. Limit titles at the start since it gives you flexibility. Lee Holloway wasn't "CTO" or "VP of Engineering" when Cloudflare started; I was "Programmer".

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by elwatto on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @03:43PM (#25351082)

Agreed on having the flexibility. I think that's the key, the self awareness and ability to adapt. I don't think having CEO/CTO/CMO for founders is a bad idea though. Even at Cloudflare, CEO and COO were co-founders. I am more curious about what it takes to grow from a founder CTO to a public company CTO, same way than other founder roles can. Or maybe it's just too hard.

Anyway, I am flexible John! Totally onboard to give up my title if you are interested to come over and help us RevenueCat go public ;)

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by jgrahamc on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @03:51PM (#25351180)

Even at Cloudflare, CEO and COO were co-founders

Except that wasn't true... Matthew had the title CEO (because someone needed to be CEO) but Michelle's title was "Head of User Experience".

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by jeiting on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @11:40AM (#25347636)

Same could be said for CEO, you aren't really acting in the capacity as would be described by a guidance counselor. However, it is a nice signifier as to who "the boss" is. Same for CTO, it tells people, "this person owns the technical stuff", which at a software company is super important IMO.

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by beagle3 on Friday December 11, 2020 @04:33PM (#25391331)

In my first startup (circa 2000 or so), no one had a title except the CEO (because ... someone needed to be a CEO, as you mention in another reply).

However, when I was on a roadshow through Silicon Valley, almost everyone I met (a few tens of people over a month) kept asking "so, what's your title" and writing it on the title-free business card I just gave them. One of the conclusions of that roadshow was that business cards HAD to have a title; I added "CTO", one of my co-founders had 2 stacks ("VP Product" and "VP R&D") which he used depending on who they were meeting. We both did the same kind of work.

My conclusion would be "don't have titles internally - but have some consistent externally visible titles for those people you meet who need them".

I haven't needed to do a roadshow since then, I don't know if that's still common in the valley - but that ritual of asking for my title and writing it on the just-received title-free business card was so prevalent, that I assume some people would still look for that.

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by badconvincer on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @12:48PM (#25348767)

Well a big reason I took the CTO promotion at my company was because I wanted to get out of programming and overhaul our stack and overly expensive implementation (which we were hugely successful at, dropping costs by more than 60%). Is a CTO required to code?

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by icedchai on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @02:27PM (#25350109)

It depends... How big is the company?

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by badconvincer on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @02:31PM (#25350173)

~60 people overall. Around $15 million in annual net revenue. 12 people in the technology department.

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Re:Evolution of my role as a founder CTO by icedchai on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @02:46PM (#25350360)

Yeah, for a company that size I'd say there are more strategic things you could be working on, rather than coding.

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