Do you really need CTO Co-Founder?
Hey guys
I run AMBCrypto, we are a Crypto news portal with over 4M+ users per month, last week I was involved in a discussion on whether someone should hire a CTO as a Co-Founder or NOT?
Below is my personal opinion and experience on this, you can also share your experience on this, so that community can learn something meaningful from you.
- I have seen few co-founders hiring a technical co-founder just to do some normal tech work, for which you can easily hire someone on any freelancer web-like Upwork, Freelancer, etc. I think the best strategy is to start giving some work then see their way of working and their character, once you are sure that you both share the same type of vision and mission then only approach him for the co-founder position and in the starting only make everything clear like stacks, responsibility, and tasks, etc.
Do share your experiences below.
If you are a tech company, you need a CTO unless you are tech savvy. Else you are gonna be scammed and/or mis-managed one way or another down the road.
Yeah, but it's better to pay someone on an hourly basis for giving you an idea of what sort of tech stacks you really need. Once you have proved your MVP then lots of tech guys will be ready to join you, but don't just wait for a CTO to start the project.
This also depends on how much the business is depended on technology.
Yes, totally agree with this.
Only if u lacks skills the skills he/she has
As a tech person, I have seen many non-tech folks define something as “normal task” which actually are not in reality. The other way happens too.
Having said that, I don’t personally think everyone needs a CTO. Largely depends on what you are trying to achieve in your biz through a CTO.
I am new here on IH and building an API gateway for non-tech founders/no-code devs. I am happy to engage in Tech conversation if anyone needs help(no-string). Would love to make some friends!:)
Agree, these days we have so many forums and other things to connect with each other. Instead of waiting for a CTO, maybe talk to someone to see if your project is really tech loaded or requires just some simple tech stacks.
I've been struggling to find a co-founder for a couple of smaller projects as a non-technical founder and it is tough. I like your approach, and something I've been pursuing in one of my projects, but haven't been successful yet.
That problem though helped me come up with an idea that I'm now working on with a fantastic group of people. We're launching CollabClub - a platform for you to exchange/barter time so if you need technical support you can get if in exchange for your own skills/time.
You shouldn't start a tech company alone if you're not technical. Unless you can get away with building a no/low code solution for an MVP, you're more than likely going to overspend/get scammed on outsourcing. People tend to underestimate the difficulties of outsourcing and the nuisances of going back and forth with a freelancer or dev shop.
The other thing to keep in mind is if you're looking to raise money from investors, how are you going to prove to investors that the founding team is capable of building a successful company if you are relying on third parties to build the solution? Showing that you can build the initial product in-house also demonstrates to investors that you have the competencies required to be successful.
Agree, having basic knowledge is good to create an MVP.
I'd say if you are not technical, it's probably better to have a tech person on the team as it will save you a lot of money and headache and you can iterate much faster. I am running into this issue currently. I found a great developer on Upwork to help build my MVP, however, I have run into an issue where I know exactly what I need to scale up the platform, fix usability issues, and increase my DAU, but I can't afford to pay my developer! So now I'm basically stuck in limbo until I can find a tech co-founder or raise funding.
We at DigitalFirst.AI have an interesting case. We ourselves do not have any technical knowledge, but we received a large government grant that gave us money to hire specifically an external softwarehouse. We decided to hire a CTO anyway because we were afraid that we would not get along - as non-technical people - with a softwarehouse. However, we did not give the shares to the CTO, we hired him on a contract.
Now, 4 months later, it turns out that we get on well with Product Owner on the softwarehouse side, and our CTO quit himself because he did not feel needed and independent enough.
It turned out that our tool is so marketing-related that the entire platform is just a packaging tailored for our needs and we do not need a technical specialist to contact an external team of programmers - they understand us perfectly and know how to translate our needs into technical world.
Why do I recommend an external team?
Agreed, if you are looking for additional, AI oriented help from researchers, please send us an email rsfi2017@gmail.com. We would love to help.
Nice , we are also doing the same.
The way I look at this for any of these positions is that the O is not for Operator, but for Opportunist. A Chief Opportunist can be transformative to your business and industry in a way you can't imagine, in the literal sense.