Remove CTO Hire Remove Development Remove Product
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53 Questions Developers Should Ask Innovators

TechEmpower

At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. It’s part of our job to ask questions about their plans, challenge their assumptions, and suggest paths to success. The innovator/developer relationship needs to be a conversation.

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Startup CTO or Developer

TechEmpower

What does it mean to be a CTO for a startup? Should a startup CTO spend their time programming? The role of a CTO varies as the company matures. Here’s a graphic from Socal CTO that illustrates the roles as they change over time: In its earliest days, a startup’s top need is often to produce a product.

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Hiring Developers Before Product/Market Fit?

SoCal CTO

Using my StartupRoar as a radar, I came across a great post by Gabriel Weinberg Do you really need a full-time hire for that? Hiring seems to be the preferred use of seed funds (by investors and founders), whereas I'd prefer a focus on customer acquisition. In other words, they come in asking for help with sourcing and hiring.

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Startup CTO or Developer

SoCal CTO

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. In December 2007, I described how I commonly take on an Acting CTO Role in a Start-up. I used an image from Roger Smith that describes the varying roles of a CTO as the company matures.

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Part-Time Startup CTO?

SoCal CTO

Based on my posts Startup CTO or Developer and Acting CTO , Chris O’Meara wrote an interesting post Startup CTO: Could It Work? They tend to know the operations side of a software business well enough to be the one overseeing deploys, crafting the infrastructure plans, and monitoring the health of the product.

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Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers

SoCal CTO

I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Did they really need a Startup CTO or Developer or both? Did they have a Weak Development Team ? Did they have a Weak Development Team ? He had a partially built product.

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Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?

Both Sides of the Table

The terms “CTO&# and “VP Engineering&# have such stigmas associated with what they are that I’m sure some people will feel uncomfortable with the definitions I’ve put forward. I hope many will read this and have an answer for the question, “what’s the different between a CTO and a VP of Engineering?&#.