Startup CTO mistakes I'd rather not repeat... | Hacker News Reader

Startup CTO mistakes I'd rather not repeat...

blog.carlschmidt.ca

30 pointsmgenzel13 comments

Not to be overly glib, but the #1 "Startup CTO mistake" you can make is having a CTO. Even on paper, the CTO is an architect's role --- which you don't have time for. In practice, it's a place to put founding developers out to pasture when they burn out.

Let's approach this from another angle. Lets say you have two equal founders, one business guy and one tech guy. Then let's say the business guy becomes CEO. What title does the tech guy have? What are the tech guy's responsibilities? Let's say the company is successful, and now the tech guy is managing 10 engineers. What are his title and responsibilities?

Maybe the CTOs you've meet have been useless, but it's obvious you need a Cx0/techie-founder kind of position.

For another take, See Eric Ries: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-...

VP/Engineering (if you're an execution player) or VP/Product Management (if you're a vision player). Both of those titles are close to the revenue. In a small, focused startup, don't discount "lead developer with a board seat"; also a strong role.

If you're the tech founder in this scenario, the last thing you want to do is put yourself in the architecture ghetto. What will happen is that your company will then hire a VP/Eng and a VP/PM. You are in a very crappy place to compete for mindshare against Eng and PM from a CTO's desk.

"Lets say you have two equal founders, one business guy and one tech guy."

You can do what RIM does and have two people share CEO positions. http://www.rim.net/newsroom/media/executive/index.shtml

I think you are thinking that the term "startup" applies only to a particular size company. Can a 100-person company still be a startup? I think a lot of people would say, "Yes." And you often don't get to be a 100-person company if somewhere along the way you didn't have some really bright person performing that function. Your founders aren't always genius tech guys and, TBH, you can't always pry great tech talent away from other great companies without fancy title "upgrades"...

I don't want to wade into the "startup semantics" thing, which is almost as bad as "hacker/cracker". We're a startup, except we're not, because we're profitable and we've been around for 4 years. Etc, etc.

I'm saying the CTO title is bad for two reasons:

* It's a deceptively bad title to assume, because to a lot of people, it denotes someone who has stepped away both from coding and from actively managing MRDs and roadmaps. There are smart people with CTO titles, but, like it or not, there are a lot of dumb people with CTO titles too.

* The role itself is weak compared to the VP/E, who owns the dev schedule, and the VP/PM, who owns the roadmap and the customer contacts. Both those roles can win arguments with appeals to authority that the "CTO" can't counter.

It's not that marketable. It's a vulnerable and (often) superfluous role. It's a net lose. Avoid it!

Thanks for the clarification. Both of your replies have been more productive than your original comment.

Glad you approve.

So, what if you're in a start-up doing a CTO's job, VP/E and VP/PM. What job title should you have in your opinion? It's also my understanding VP/E and VP/PM report to CTO usually.

The VP/PM's I've known reported either to CEO or to VP/M. The VP/E's I've known invariably reported to CEO. I'm not saying it never happens that the CTO heads engineering, but I don't think that's typical.

I guess this depends on startup size. I think most technical co-founders see the hierarchy divided between a CE(xec)O and a CE(ng)O and tend to call that second slot the CTO. After twenty employees or so the VP/E tend to take over the real management duties and the CTO tend to be an architect role that slowly loses influence unless the CTO active asserts themselves.

There are soooo many ineffectual CTOs, and even more ineffectual architects --- if you want to be the tech vision founder, why not stay right next to revenue and become VP/Product Management? Trying to make the (IMO notorious) CTO position work seems like playing to lose.

I think I have some of the same problems,I thought it was a good write up and hopefully will make me more aware when I am making a common mistake...

Spending to much time on the technology over the people seemed very relevant to me, as it might pay off in the short term but as the company grows it surely hurts it.

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