In this post, I will address the founding CTO who must progress through his own transition of permitting other folks to be a part of shaping the future of the product, and the best road to get there.
Let’s begin with the common profile of the early stage software company founding CTO…
Inexperience: Founding CTOs tend to lack experience in general. They often learn as they go along, hopefully by leveraging an experienced CTO mentor.
Lack of breadth and/or depth in functional expertise: In order to be a true CTO, one has to be a generalist… and one has to have a senior management team that covers the depth of functional expertise (product management, new product development, product interface/user experience). In start-ups, the CTO is most always the lone manager, with several developers reporting to him. This forces the CTO to wear all of the various functional hats at the same time. which suggests he is not genuinely able to give any one of those functions its justice. Because of this, the founding CTO is inclined to gravitate towards his functional DNA (i.e. the experience base he already possessed), while performing a mediocre job with the others.
Introversion: Due to the fact that the CTO needs to wear (amongst others) the product development managerial hat, he typically spends most of his time at the office with the development team. This invariably comes at the cost of wearing the product management hat… which comes at the cost of being out in the field interacting with prospects and customers. Hence, the founding CTO is likely to be introverted, relying on incoming customer/market signals through the support team, the sales team and being involved in sales/support calls.
When the start-up software company gets to the expansion stage, and as the company grows in staff and customers, a senior management team needs to develop. As the CEO looks to create his senior team, so does the CTO.
But letting go is tough to do for the founding CTO … Let’s look at why…
EGO… As hard as is it is for the founding CEO to cede control to a senior management team, it is twice as hard for the founding CTO. At least the CEO can still act like a CEO (he’s still the boss!) But the founding CTO ceding control to a VP of Product Development and a VP of Product Management begs the question:
“What am I going to do then???”
My answer is:
“Anything you want to do… There’s a large amount of work still to be done!”
You will still make an impact as a CTO even when you recruit a senior management team. In fact, just as in the case of the CEO, it frees you up to do what can strategically affect your company… and frees you up to do what you appreciate doing the most.
So before we talk about what the founding CTO can do next, let’s make sure we understand what the senior folk he’s hiring will be doing …
- Head of Product Management: effectively takes over the product from the CTO and sets the product management process. The product manager needs to OWN the product. Therefore, the CTO must let go of the baby to the product manager. And the product manager must not report to the CTO! Rather, he ought to report to the CEO.
- Head of Product Development: helps the product manager discover what it would take to build what the PM wants to build… and after the product backlog is prioritized, he manages the team that will build what has been prioritized. The VP of PD reports to the CTO.
- Head of UI/UX: could report to either the CTO or the product manager. Either way, the UI/UX guy must be locked at the hip with the PM. He is responsible for prototyping all the ideas of the PM, and makes sure the new products/features have been vetted by customers before the development team builds them.
- Head of IT/Operations: Assuming you have an SaaS solution, an associated data center and IT infrastructure will need to be managed. This position reports to the CTO.
What does the founding CTO do next? Where do I even start…
MANAGE: He needs to make sure he has recruited, on-boarded and mentored his senior management team. This includes making sure everyone is marching towards a common goal, are appropriately tooled and resourced, and are typically happy and meeting their commitments. Yes, the CTO must manage… Yuck!!!
Alright, so what else can he do…
RESEARCH: What about becoming the long term product visionary? While the product manager(s) is(are) considering of current markets and current market needs, the CTO can glimpse further ahead and envision future markets, long term customer needs, and long term product abilities. This brings us to the CTO forming and driving the typically uncared for Research component within R&D.
STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: Identify strategic product integration opportunities that can lead to the opening up of new solutions, new markets, or new distribution channels.
HIT THE ROAD JACK: Be the company’s technical evangelist. Whether you are evangelizing to prospects, customers, analysts or strategic partners, early stage companies can always use more and more customer facing senior managers in the field.
The list continues on and on.
The point here is for the founding CTO to quit acting like a CTO, and select a role he can sink his teeth into. The key is for the CTO to hand off product to the product manager, or become the product manager himself (for real). The key is also for the CTO to uncover something he’s passionate about to do in his new function, whatever it may be.
Firas Raouf is a Venture Partner at OpenView.
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