In an early-stage startup, the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) frequently immerses themselves in technical details, focusing intensely on developing the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Their world revolves around lines of code rather than lines of revenue. The startup CTO leads a small team where everyone needs to roll up their sleeves and code.
However, as the company matures, this heads-down approach can limit growth. The CTO role must evolve dramatically, from hands-on builder to strategic conductor overseeing diverse engineering teams. CEOs who understand this progression can better partner with their technology chiefs through the scaling journey.
The CTO transforms from directing a few developers to orchestrating an engineering symphony across the enterprise. Understanding this progression and entering with the right expectations is key for scaling successfully.
Based on my experience working with different companies, here’s how the CTO role usually changes over time:
The Lean Startup CTO
In the beginning, it’s all hands on deck. Alone or with just a few developers under their wing, your CTO mainly rolls up their sleeves alongside the team. They can be a tech leader in your startup, or a tech leader in your out-source team, or your CTO.
Their main contribution to the business is entirely focused on manifesting the MVP, turning the whiteboard visions into reality.
In these close quarters, everyone needs to pull their weight coding and designing. As a startup CEO, you and your CTO make tradeoffs quickly based on execution speed, not process. Your CTO must intimately understand the technology and make swift decisions to drive relentless progress. This start-up, heads-down style delivers tremendous velocity but starts to limit the role as the company grows.
Support Your CTO As An Early-Stage CEO:
In the early stages of a startup, you should focus on empowering your CTO.
Judge progress based on the working software shipped, not the formality of the delivery process. The most important conversations between you and your CTO revolve around short-term trade-offs in technology.
You need to discuss when and where these trade-offs are made and how they could affect future development. The reason behind these decisions matters more than the specifics of what is being done or how it’s being accomplished.
Think about these kind of discussions:
- How will this scale with many new users?
- Can we quickly pivot to new customer insight?
- How quickly can you gather data to steer a decision?
Less process likely means less predictability in terms of timelines and visibility into long term roadmaps. That’s ok for now as it buys you flexibility and speed. But as your organisation grows, that’s the point to focus on in the development of the next level of CTO.
The Managerial CTO
As your engineering teams grow larger, with more than 10 members, specialized roles begin to emerge. These include roles like front-end developers, back-end developers, DevOps engineers, QA testers, UX designers, and product managers. Your CTO can no longer be involved in every decision or be the expert on the entire technology stack. Their focus needs to expand from code to the first stage of coordination and process.
Although your CTO may still do some coding occasionally, their primary responsibility is to establish processes. These processes determine how the various technology components work together and how decisions are made within the organization.
Your CTO will own architecture, security, and compliance while empowering teams to execute autonomously and make independent decisions. This is a major transition point and one that not all engineers are interested in, nor good at.
The balancing act for your CTO here is to retain technical gravitas while learning to delegate. Direct reports now do what your CTO used to in the last stage. Look out for a sense of “if I do it myself it’ll be better/faster” as a sign that your CTO needs to change.
For people who are used to working individually, it can be an uncomfortable transition to step back and achieve results through leading. Letting go of individual contributions and relying on a team can be challenging.
Support Your CTO As A CEO At Post Seed Stage:
As the CEO, you can aid this transition by keeping everyone focused on a clearly outlined plan and making sure the company follows that plan. Get ready to discuss priorities and resource needs.
Appreciate that technical work needs to happen, but don’t be afraid to challenge your CTO to explain “why” or “why now”. And ultimately, make sure your CTO is empowering their team, rather than being a bottleneck.
The Scaled CTO
As your engineering organization grows past 100 people, your CTO’s role inevitably moves further from the technical details. With capable VPs and managers running the show, your CTO manages managers, not individual contributors.
Their core focus becomes cross-team alignment – ensuring all departments are rowing in the same direction. Your CTO serves as the glue between groups, bridging priorities and making tradeoffs to guide unified progress.
This “meta” role is difficult but essential as scale increases complexity. On one hand, your CTO still needs to be technically skilled to engage in detailed conversations with their team and comprehend the decisions being made. Their thinking and approach has to shift from knowing the answer to knowing the question.
Support Your CTO As A CEO At Your Scale Stage:
As the CEO, you can assist your CTO by asking questions that help them step back from the details and see the bigger picture. It’s important to recognize that success metrics evolve over time. While roadmaps and delivery remain important, the key to achieving success lies in aligning teams around a clear vision.
Your CTO should be able to abstract technical details and take a broader look at the business. Work closely with your CTO to ensure they understand how their team’s work fits into the overall company strategy. Focus your discussions on how teams interact and collaborate, and help align them on outcomes that drive desired behaviors.
The Strategic CTO
The last stage for your CTO role has them operate as a strategic executive focused on financial performance, competitive positioning, and business partnerships, guided by technology.
With anywhere from hundreds to thousands of engineers, they must effectively delegate hands-on leadership to VPs of Engineering, Architecture, and Infrastructure.
Your CTO represents technology in the boardroom, concerned with overall company direction. The day-to-day operation is run by their direct reports. The key for your CTO and their team here is no different than any other executive: establish a structure that ensures the right information bubbles to the top in a timely manner.
But much like the rest of the executive team and their part of the organization, your CTO shouldn’t lose touch with the engineering aspects. While in this stage your CTO role expands and becomes focused upwards to the board and outwards to the broader market, a CTO can never afford to ignore good technical principles and drive those in their organisation.
This variety of responsibilities shows why your CTO role must evolve through different stages. Their focus needs to move up the management skill stack – from low-level execution to management and strategy. But a solid technical foundation and connection to engineering should remain unchanged.
While based on the same foundation of engineering, problem solving, and technology vision, the skillset is so diverse that it is unlikely the starting CTO will be the final CTO.
If you are search for a right CTO for your startup, this article will be a great help: How to Find The Right CTO For Your Startup
Or this article, 4 Catastrophic Startup Leadership Mistakes, will help you understand and avoid the common software startup pitfalls.
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I am Klaas Ardinois, a long time technology executive and co-founder of A&H Consulting.
We work with CEOs and founders to help them navigate strategic challenges in a technology dominated world.
Want to know if your CTO and technology strategy are aligned for success? Schedule a complimentary consultation with us today.
