What it takes to be CTO is different at different stages:

Pre-product market fit: - Hands on building of prototypes/product to test PMF (doer) - Manage a small team (probably all know each other) coordination (think scrum master)

Product Market fit: - Prioritize quality over speed. (editor) - Recruit, ramp and retain random engineers.

Scale + Maintain: - Frameworks to help teams of teams delivering stuff (editor in chief) - Fight rebuilding/refactoring working software - Recruit, ramp and retain software leaders - Conflicts/politic resolutions