Defining the CTO role that fits all kinds of organizations is incredibly hard, nigh impossible. One of the challenges with that is the role of technology is different for different companies. Depending on whether you are a software services company, a software product company, a digital agency — the expectation from a CTO would be very different. In fact, I would say it is harder to generalize the CTO role across companies than any other CXO role (CIO comes close though).
Let us just talk about a pure software play company. If you have an enterprise SaaS product, your role as a CTO will be very different than if you have an ad-driven free consumer app. The former would need a lot of front-facing interactions with enterprise customers and a lot of operational stuff; the latter would need you to focus on the core product offering, A/B testing of features, finding new ways of attracting advertisers and customers.
Should the CTO necessarily be a hands-on software engineer? As much as I hate to use the cop-out words: “It depends”. In an early-stage startup where technology is at the forefront of things, the CTO is just a designation. The title has no meaning until the startup becomes a sustainable business. Until that point, the CTO (and anyone else in the whole founding team) doesn’t have the luxury of saying: “This isn’t my job”. So yes, in such cases, a CTO who can be an effective engineer would be an asset. Oh, but then the CTO should also be effective at sales/pre-sales, product management, DevOps, hiring — you name it. In a startup, being a good enough “Jack of all trades” generalist is a terrific qualification for a CTO, and the chief among all such trades is the ability to build software.
However, when the organization matures, a generalist CTO may become a liability. If as a CTO, you are doing the same things in Year Five that you were doing in Year One, then it is a strong indication you have not grown. In fact, it would also indirectly mean that your team is not growing! Let me unpack that — as a business grows, the generalist approach to things does not work. For example, your passable DevOps skills that served well during Year One may not be enough to handle Year Five’s workloads. You will need to bring in a DevOps specialist (or several). Even if you are an excellent learner and have a deep interest in DevOps, there will be a million other more important things screaming for your attention. Plus by Year Five the business stakes are much higher — you are not dealing with enthusiastic and ever-forgiving early adopters anymore. If your product is down for even a few minutes, it may mean your customers may lose a lot of money. You cannot afford that now. So if you are doing the same things in Year Five, it indicates that you have lost every opportunity to build a team of professionals around you, specialists who know their craft far better than you.
I see the CTO’s role as being the key influencer whose chief job is to build a narrative about the company’s business goals with a technology lens and percolate that down to the organization. In other words: building the culture. Many people describe their early startup days as being brutal with 100 hour weeks and a relentless schedule. However, most of them also have fond memories of the time. That is when the founding team has fully bought into the vision and believes in what they are doing. However, this cannot go on forever. I find the whole 100-hour-work-week an overly romantic notion of how a startup works. It is not the culture, it is an interim phase where there is no option for the founding team but to give their everything and push their product out in the market. If you are doing the same hustle in Year Five and calling it a “Startup Culture”, you are doing it wrong. When the company tastes success and the team grows, it cannot rely on the founding team’s sensibilities and quirks to be the unwritten laws. With the influx of new hires, the culture breaks down quickly unless there is a concerted effort made to (re)define the culture. And I feel that the CTO should play a key role in that.
So much has been written about company culture that it would be foolish of me to try and summarize all that in one section here. Let me wrap this up by saying that if you are a CTO in an early-stage startup, don’t spend time figuring out what you should or should not do. If something has come all the way to you, attend to it — the buck stops with you! The key thing is to watch out for recurring time sinks that suck away your energy — things that are moderately essential to the business but not really your forte. Find out ways to automate such things, or delegate them, or outsource them, or eliminate them altogether. Another key thing is that you are always setting the culture for your team, especially when you are not explicitly doing so. Be involved in hiring across all functions, have regular 1:1s with everyone in the company while you can, always remember that your actions form a part of the culture. A CTO’s job isn’t just to find the best technology solution, it is about assembling and enabling the best team who can find the solution. It is much harder than it looks and definitely not something just 100-hour-work-weeks can accomplish.
