What does a startup CTO actually do?

"The CTO's primary job is to make sure the company's technology strategy serves its business strategy"

Best description I've seen. Startups that follow the opposite scenario often die because they're little more than academic labs, and no one will pay for what they're doing.

If you're an early-stage startup, be careful with the CTO role. Make sure they can add value THROUGHOUT your operations, as oppose to "evangelizing" about your product. Too much time designing/feature-creep, and not enough time polishing/productizing/documenting == death.

Make sure your product does a few things but does them better than anyone else. Define your core competency and stick to it, establish a name for yourself, then begin stacking on features to distance yourself while competitors play catchup.

Any product with a feature list 10 feet wide but only a 1 foot deep, is still a baby pool. So guess what happens when a potential customer dives in head first during diligence? For some hackers, it may explain why they can't close a deal.

I like the writeup, but I wonder what size your startup has to be before this kicks in. Under N engineers, isn't the CTO just the founder with the most technical experience?

CTO = Produce Best Technologies for The Business

CIO = Consume Best Technologies for The Business

Excellent article. Quite comforting to see how the role evolves past the "tiny start-up" stage (which is where I'm at at the moment.

It's worth pointing out that many of these responsibilities don't just appear out of nowhere. They're there from day one - from day -1, in fact. They might become more formalised as the start-up grows, but I'd be seriously worried about any start-up whose CTO (or technical cofounder) doesn't take up responsibilities 1-4 at least right away.