What is the role of a CTO in a startup?
Do you want your startup to succeed? Then you need a CTO!
In today’s fast-growing world there are more and more startups appearing every day. But not every startup is a big success. Why? Maybe because these projects don’t have a Chief Technology Officer, hidden under CTO abbreviation? Today we are going to expose the role of a CTO in a startup and why is it important to have one.
The task of CTO is to provide the efficient use and allocation of resources of the company, to turn the implementation of projects into regulated processes with predictable results.
The scope of attention of CTO is the technical aspect of the product, it’s quality, productivity, effectiveness, reliability, and life cycle.
The purpose is to ensure that the technological strategies of the company are in line with business strategies.
The main difference from other Chief positions is that CTO focuses on the management of the technical part of the business and productive resources, he is involved in making the most important technical and business decisions. Simply put, CTO is the one who brings together the skills of great computer scientists and businessmen as well.
From the very beginning! When you have the idea, you need to be sure that this idea is saleable and technically available to implement into life. And of course, you are not interested in wasting money. In this stage, you need a person, who is commercially experienced enough, has knowledge about various technical approaches and is capable of selecting the best one. He is the one who can turn his coding abilities to business. CTO is also in charge for:
- monitoring and evaluating of financial/operating performance
- updates/reviews of major projects and Initiatives
- planning and formulation of business unit strategy
- evaluation and discussion of administrative policies/procedures
The next step is the formation of a professional team of developers. To have success you need to recruit a great team. If you are only at the start of making your own projects, it’s likely that you have not professional ties to create such a crew. That is where CTO comes for help again. He is a real team-lead, who takes the initiative in:
- communication
- organization of teams
- division of roles
- mitigating the conflicts
- training new employees
- evaluating the productivity of a work team
- being the direct supervisor of the technical staff
- discussion of important human resource issues
It is important to remember that the team is established when its effectiveness is higher than the overall effectiveness of every separate working employee.
Finding a great team of developers is essential but a really good CTO is an experienced architect and developer himself. Decisions made by CTO in the early stages are the most important ones in every startup. That’s when the framework, language, infrastructure and technology stack are chosen. The CTO’s main aim is to develop and to launch the startup product as quickly as possible. That’s why he is on duty to build the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) which is the quickest and the smallest version of your idea, it has only the core features which make the product work. Therefore, CTO must be technically skillful and competent in developing the MVP. After the stabilization of the product comes the stage of testing. It is very rare when a startup is concerned about QA and has the team of QA Engineers. A good CTO knows that he should build focus on this.
One of the interviewed CTO’s said:
“Having become CTO, I forgot the phrase “I don’t know”. Absolutely. My responsibility is to know. “When would this feature work?” or “Why the website or the app is not working properly?” — the answer “I don’t know” is excluded. It is always important to give the answer. I must go and solve every problem that is up.”
It is obvious that having CTO in a startup, especially from the very beginning, leads you to success and great progress. The technologies, ideas, users, and competitors are changing constantly and it is vital to have a man with leadership skills and a clear understanding of business needs and the right technological solutions. With CTO in your team, it is more likely that your product will become a decent competitor on market. Chief Technology Officer is like a “magician” who can solve all your raising questions and problems.
Hope this article was useful and interesting for you! Please “clap” if you like it and want to read us more! And don’t miss a chance to let professionals provide your project with TOP-NOTCH IT Talents.
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