Is it me or are there no experienced CEOs searching for CTOs?
I've been CTO (or similar) for 5 companies or so, some startups I (co-)founded and I'm now on the market again. A pattern I've seen in the past is that almost all CEOs I find that need or want a CTO are first time CEOs. They might have professional success in the past, but not running a company. Are you noticing the same?
I believe this is because the 2nd time around a good founder/CEO already has a huge network of people that she/he already trusts.
Yeah, that's my guess as well and I wonder if I have done something wrong by not having such a network by now.
I know my co-founders from different ventures ended up taking different routes than me, after we sold our first company everyone moved to different places... and got jobs for one who had kids. Doing serial startups isn't for everyone.
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I'm just trying to figure out what to do next and I really would like to bet on someone that knows what they are doing.
It's always a two-way street. The "CEO" of nothing is taking a risk on you too with his/her hopes and dreams of success. Great, so you co-founded some startups and were the "CTO" of a 3-person startup with no team of engineers - companies that don't even exist anymore... I'm being facetious, I don't know your story, but my point is we all see our own point of view.
Yup, I don't expect someone out of my league to chose me.
I've definitely noticed the same. Also just wanted to say I read https://pupeno.com/2020/08/04/the-startup-cto-dilemma/ and I couldn't agree more! I recently just started doing the same by offering guidance to early stage startups - encouraging them to find good engineers that could become good CTOs and "advising" them along the way so they don't have to struggle.
Wow is really a good post. I am completely agree, and is a perfect resume of why I wanted to create my product MVP Maker.
Thank you. Can you tell us more about MVP Maker?
How is that going? My experience has been mixed reaching out to startups with that pitch. I posted on a couple of communities and I got a universal negative response about it.
Interesting observation - I am a multi-time founder CEO looking for a CTO right now check this is see if you'd like to continue the discussion: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/hiring-cto-for-dystech-jobAd-1d5ac21834
Hey, I understand your desire to find a talented CTO, because development is now very important in any field. https://www.findvirtualcto.com/ On this site you can remotely hire a chief technical director from Ukraine. There are many experienced and talented professionals in this country who will lead your project to success.
Great to get some insight from you Pablo. Thank you...
CEOs tend to sometimes be the idea guys in their mind is occupied with wearing multiple hats and the start up phase. I can't speak for everybody but to have any success as an entrepreneur you need to be a constant learner and know how to lead by example. Failures are learning experiences and character will determine what your next steps would be.
That being said I am interested in finding a CTO that has right and left brain activity so creativity and analytical thinking can be applied to some really complicated products.
Another important factor here is availability heuristic. An experienced CEO more likely has access to capital, signed LOIs, personal network. They're more likely to convince a potential CTO in less time, ending the search. Inexperienced CEOs will search longer.
Now as a potential CTO, you see those CEOs who are conducting the searches.
That's a good point, thanks for sharing.
I already experienced multiple times that even established CEOs are in need of CTOs. What‘s interesting is that they have oftentimes no idea which skills a CTO needs to bring the company forward. They are even afraid of technology and that‘s why they‘re looking for someone who understands at least a tiny bit. That‘s how wrong hires happen pretty quickly.
I think this is an instance of the general problems CEOs have, which is, the people reporting to them know more about the subject matter, that themselves. You could expect a CTO to understand as much or more about tech as the people that work for them, same about finance and the CFO and so on. This issue is described in The Hard Thing About Hard Things with some techniques on how to overcome it.