Harvard Business School’s
Working Knowledge
HBS
CTO
Success
De PauwMay 9th
2019Culture
madewithloveYannick
De PauwDecember 24th
Van LunterMarch 6th
2018Jonas Van
managementDimitri
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the Venice Art Biennale
You’ve
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And do you even need a full-time, in-house CTO?At the start, you need a developer, a hacker, someone who knows how to make something that proves your concept and who is skilled enough to make it work for the small user base you will hopefully build up soon. They must have a broad skill set, but managing people or a department’s budget, or setting out a technical vision is not needed yet.At the start, you need a developer, a hacker, someone who knows how to make something that proves your concept and who is skilled enough to make it workIf you’re very lucky, this person is you or your co-founder, but realistically you will have a hard time finding someone who is a good hacker and is willing to work for free, which we all know is what co-founding comes down to. You need to scale the product, the infrastructure and the team, all at the same time as dealing with the non-technical challenges this brings.Now your company needs its first full-time CTO. A CTO at this point still needs to mainly look inward and know how to code, know the structure of the application and infrastructure, but the focus is shifting towards managing a team, establishing a culture and processes to be able to grow quickly. A CTO at this point still needs to mainly look inward and know how to code, … but the focus is shifting towards managing a teamWith growth come scaling issues. Scaling issues on a regional scale, security, legislation, a company vision, all of these become important whenever a technical or product decision needs to be made and after a few rounds of investment, the CTO now has clear budget and performance goals to meet, set by a board of directors they regularly meet. Success or failure, you may need a different CTO.Culture, madewithlove, Team management, Working remoteYannick De PauwMay 9th, 2019Team managementDimitri Van LunterMarch 6th, 2019Culture, Human resources, madewithloveYannick De PauwDecember 24th, 2018Jonas Van SchooteCo-founder, independent learner, motorcyclist.
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