I am CTO of Smiirl thanks to this tweet. One year later, here is what I learnt about being a CTO of a hardware company.
Be pessimistic
It may seems crazy for many entrepreneurs but being pessimistic about all I was doing helped us a lot. When you are making a real product, you have to deal with atoms, electronic, factories, trucks, planes, molds, people, time, M.O.Q. (Minimum Of Quantity), certifications, … These are the ingredients, you have to write the recipe to cook your product. And you will, but be ready to make the kitchen dirty with adjustments, delays, fix, conversations with suppliers, tests, …
Your product is not real unless you have it in your hand from your suppliers. Being pessimistic helped me to anticipate problems and find the right solution because I was already suspecting problems.
Think big
Now that you are ready to face problems, just shoot for the moon. Even if you can not see it, there is always a path to make what you want to do. It only depends on your determination. If you do not know how to do something, you will learn it or you will find someone who will. If you don’t, you have not tried hard enough.
Be ready to take risks to do big things. Being a CTO is not only to think how to build something, it is also to move mountains to build it.
Do not design
Your part of the job is to be creative on finding solutions. Not being creative about design. Engineers are not designers. If you want your product to be good, the designer is your friend. Do not try to design yourself because you may not have the mindset. Knowing how to use a software (Adobe Creative Suite or others) is not being designer. A good designer will think about all the aspects of your product; what, how, when, by who, where, which color, …
The best weapon for a hardware startup : engineer + designer.
Have a good desktop background
The picture of this article is my current desktop background. I like the fact that great things are done with simple actions. Buzz Aldrin moved his ass on Moon with a laser beam reflector and now we are able to measure the distance Earth-Moon. I added 4 words ; “Yesterday you said tomorrow” from a Nike campaign. I like to think that CTOs are like sportsmen; everyday is a step toward a better product/result.
Do simple things everyday and iterate. It is not easy everyday, but I am very happy of what I am doing. “I’m a maker”
