Startup CTO mistakes I'd rather not repeat...(blog.carlschmidt.ca) |
Startup CTO mistakes I'd rather not repeat...(blog.carlschmidt.ca) |
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-...
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.
You can do what RIM does and have two people share CEO positions. http://www.rim.net/newsroom/media/executive/index.shtml
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!
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.