Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It?

Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by abrichr on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:28PM (#45475481)

> But that one year of knowledge building, distribution, early customers, then dominates who has control over the cap table for a decade.

Can you recommend any resources for learning how to do this work yourself?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by mooreds on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:35PM (#45475537)

I'd recommend:

- the lean startup: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...

- Amy Hoy's blog: https://stackingthebricks.com/

- working in the domain you are interested in for a year. Go be a realtor. Go work in a lawncare business. etc. etc.

- read Patrick's advice about how he found customers for Appointment reminder: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/05/14/unveiling-my-second-pro...

edit: added link to Patrick's piece

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Re:Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It? by mikert89 on Saturday October 04, 2025 @02:35PM (#45475533)

One shortcut would be to:

1. pick a vertical (construction, legal, accounting, etc)

2. look at how to apply ai (compliance, voice customer service, email)

3. find sales people from a would be competitor or old school b2b saas in that area, and pay them 150$ an hour to tell you what customers are paying for

4. at the direction of how to do sales, come up with the product and either do the sales yourself without building, or pay someone to do cold calls and pitch the product

5. build the product

[ Parent | on HN ]