It is crucial for your startup to prosper to hire the right CTO. If you don't have much experience hiring and evaluating technical staff it might be challenging and this post may clear the air. The first option is to use the services of a specialist company with considerable experience in technology development to offer a CTO as a service. Finding a technical partner for a start-up is a popular option when the goal is time-efficient and cost-effective, so look for a programmer who can work with the CTO or co-founder.
On the other hand, if your start-up needs a CTO with an operational background it is better to hire someone with a handy tool to adapt the technology to your daily operations and product offerings. it could also be the wrong person, that doesn't have enough experience, their work is too slow.
Based on my experience, there are some top qualities that separate a good chief technology officer from a great one. A great CTO should have experience in managing people, developing projects, and delivering measurable results. He or she should also have experience in managing teams and selecting technical strategies.
This is the 7 steps I would offer to hire the right CTO:
- Consider hiring a technical advisor before you hire a CTO
- Define the CTO requirements role and job description
- Create 1:1 mapping
- Prioritize culture fit, integrity and motivation
- Sell the position, be super convincing
- Locate the best candidates
- Make an offer they can't refuse
Technical knowledge, professional experience and leadership style of a CTO play a crucial role in accelerating a start-up's growth curve. In a start-up, the CTO is responsible for the software product - from writing the code for your MVP to recruiting engineers. A CTO must be an experienced juggler: he needs to manage the software development team for its growth, to ensure a rapid launch, to manage technical debt and motivate the team.
Although it can be difficult, it is not impossible for a non-technical founder to find a CTO. Still, startups do a lot, so the CTO are not special.
The CTO gives the face and personality that represent the technical aspirations of the company. For tech startups that promote new and innovative ideas, it is mandatory to have a qualified CTO who is inspired by and trusted by the product they build. A great CTO will have ideas to present to the other chief officers and technical team of the product, suggestions for improvements and adjustments, and a high degree of adherence to deadlines.
But never forget that making the right technological decisions will make your product and business prone to growth, less likely to fail and less likely to frustrate your technical leadership and sales teams.
To put things in order, the CTO interacts with the development team to allocate available resources and set tasks for implementation. A good CTO organizes an effective and productive workflow for projects where development meets
When I founded my start-up, I experienced first-hand the hurdles of finding a CTO. After reading the description, we realized that small businesses do not need to look for a traditional CTO, but simply want to find a technical co-founder. This could be a technical partner, a developer, or a tech-savvy person hired by the startup owner as a technical partner.
If you think your own technical expertise is high enough, consider taking on the role of CTO instead of the next CEO. A job like VP of Engineering or the senior CTO of a start-up implies that the start-up has the experience to be a CTO, but does not necessarily open the door to being the CTO of the start-up.
Startups want to find a technical co-founder or CTO because they expect him to be highly qualified developers. If the founder has no technical background, it will be difficult to understand the true competence of the CTO. An experienced CTO who is focused on his career will not be interested in such proposals.