Buildly Labs

Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the role of a CTO is evolving—especially with how quickly AI is changing how we build software. I honestly never likes the titles CEO, CTO, CMO etc. for startups it felt disingenuous, how can you be the Chief Technology Officer when you are the only one? I think of CTO though now as a brand on AI lead development teams.

In a lot of early-stage teams, there’s a common challenge:
You don’t necessarily need a full-time CTO yet, but you do need help making good product and technical decisions early on.

At the same time, AI tools are making it easier than ever to build with smaller and smaller teams, but it's also easier to go in the wrong direction if there isn’t enough structure or guidance.

So we’ve been experimenting with a different approach.

We’re building what we’re calling an AI-Native CTO network through our platform (CollabHub).

The idea isn’t to create a top-down consulting model. Instead, it’s based on a few principles:

1. CTO as a collaborative role, not a gatekeeper
Rather than one person having all the answers, the goal is to bring together experience, community input, and open-source contributions to guide decisions.

2. AI as an accelerator, not a replacement
We’re using AI to handle repetitive or scaffolding work, while keeping humans focused on product thinking, architecture, and creativity.

3. Open systems over black boxes
We’re building this around an open-source mindset—so the process, tools, and even parts of the system can be shared, improved, and adapted by others.

4. Certification through real work
We’ve started introducing an “AI-Native CTO” certification, but instead of just courses, it’s based on:

• Contributing to real projects

• Working with teams

• Demonstrating the ability to deliver

The goal is to create a network of people who can step in and support teams at different stages—whether that’s early validation, MVP, or scaling.

It’s still early, and we’re learning as we go, but it’s been encouraging to see how much more aligned teams become when there’s a mix of:

• Clear product direction

• Collaborative leadership

• AI-assisted workflows

I’d be really interested to hear:

• How others are thinking about the role of CTOs evolving

• Whether people are experimenting with similar models

• What’s working (or not) when combining AI with real product development

Always open to sharing more if helpful. Or stop by and join the small but growing community.