Your Early Stage Start-up Doesn’t Need a CTO

In fact, you’re most likely hurting it by hiring one

I’ve seen it over and over again — Internet start-up gets bogged down by “technical process” and “correctness of technical implementation”. Most consumer (and Enterprise for that matter) early-stage start-ups don’t need a CTO. In fact you are hurting your start-up by hiring one. Your one goal in a start-up is to create traction as quickly as possible for whatever product you are building with as little technical definition and rules to “play by”.

When taking a start-up off the ground the single and absolutely necessary position you need to fill is Product Wizard (technically savvy product person, growth hacker, call it what you will) that will take magical steps to build the product. They’ll find the magical shortcuts that are only possible in software not in real world. You’ll need 1000x speed-up in the early stage of your start-up and any impairment (including technical process) slims down your already slim chances of success.

It is a known fact that Sergei and Larry weren’t outstanding at building software but they had vision for a new search product and went ahead and implemented it themselves. Once the product reached enough scale and was validated by market they hired the required technical resources to implement the software for long term maintainability and put the necessary technical procedures in place. That did not happen until many years into the product however. Always wait until last possible moment to put process and technical procedures in place.