With the boom in the tech industry over the last couple of years, every entrepreneurial mind in the industry is looking at grasping the best benefits from the market. However, in most cases startup founders are intimidated by the idea of development teams, hiring developers and building the production from scratch.
On the whole, the technology part of setting up the architecture, finding the right technology and ensuring the maintenance of the product post its development becomes too much to handle for most business minded entrepreneurs and this is where a CTO steps in and takes charge.
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That is when C level hiring becomes imperative and a CTO needs to be taken on board if the company is to flourish and grow. CTO hiring, C level management hiring or C suite hiring comes into play when a company reaches a certain point in its development process.
Important things to know when hiring a CTO
Most startups decide to hire a CTO during the seed stage. This decision in the early stages allows for enough time to share product vision and scale it over time. However, hiring a CTO can be quite an experience for startup entrepreneurs especially if they have little or no understanding of technology. A few important things to consider are listed below before embarking on the journey of CTO hiring for your startup business.
Architectural Decision Making: When hiring a CTO for the company, it is imperative that the initial development of the product be handled by the individual themselves. In order to successfully accomplish this they must have the required expertise to do so with hands-on knowledge of programming languages and they should adopt a hands-on approach when creating the initial product architecture. They must be responsible for selecting technology, finding a technology partner, or an IT outsourcing company for development.
Share Product Vision: A good CTO must be capable of inciting excitement in the product development team. They must be able to visualize the product and share this vision with the product development team whether in-house or outsourced.
Cultural Fit: A CTO must be a good technical fit for the startup and be understanding to its needs in terms of technology. In addition they must be a good cultural fit and must be able to adapt and step into different shoes depending on the needs of the company at various times during its development journey.
Manage Tech Innovation: Without innovative ideas, a CTO will fail to take the startup to the next level. They need to keep innovating with new features, functionalities and technologies in order to offer customers better products with each new version release. In addition, a CTO can assist with product innovation and build the next product that helps fit the market requirement and the customer’s expectations.
Preventing Scope Creep: Scope creep is one of the most common reasons that prevents startups from being unable to stay on the planned development roadmap. A CTO ensures that developers stay on course and follow the roadmap without being tempted to add new innovations or features midway thereby derailing the project. It is important that the MVP follows the designated roadmap.
Key Areas to Scrutinize CTO Candidates:
CTOs have a major role to play in the company and candidates must be scrutinised carefully before selection. Some of the things to look for when scrutinising them are:
Experience: CTO candidates must have experience as this is a founder position for the startup. They cannot be mid-level technology experts but should come with at least a decade of experience in the industry including managing teams and product innovation.
Technology expertise: The CTO is responsible for decision making when it comes to technology in the startup. Whether it is selecting technology for development, frameworks and libraries for front/back end or programming languages, the CTO must be capable of making the right decisions and taking the startup forward.
Passion: The CTO must be driven and passionate about your idea and be willing to do what it takes to take the business forward.
Eager Learner: Technology keeps evolving and emerging technologies, versions, patches etc., keep rolling out in quick succession. A CTO must be flexible enough to want to learn everything there is to know about these emerging tech trends and use them to take the company forward.
Leadership Skills: An important skill that differentiates CTOs as being in a class of their own and a cut above the rest is their leadership skills. They must be able to motivate the team and lead them through the ups and downs of the journey of the startup.
Ability to think out of the box: It is very important to ask situational questions and analyze the responses of the candidates in order to determine if they possess the ability to think out of the box. This can be a life saver when your startup runs into trouble and needs to think quick and act fast to save itself from going aground.
Communication skills: They must possess good communication skills as they need to communicate not just with the founders but also with the stakeholders from time to time regarding the product and how to move ahead with the same.
Entrepreneurial Skills: Another important skill that you must assess when hiring for the CTO position at your company is their ability to solve real world problems and fix issues that come in the way of realizing company dreams.
Forward thinking ability: A CTO should be able to analyze the current situation and predict the future. They should be able to determine whether a product acts as a blockchain real-life example and needs a blockchain expert for the same.
Conclusion
Now that you have the rundown on how to hire a CTO for a startup, you should also consider that this is a mammoth task and letting in the experts can be a great help. CoffeeMug.ai is a high-end, technology driven AI networking platform designed to help startups in getting necessary fundings and exposure to a wide range of business entities that have years of experience in the industry.
FAQs
Q. What does a CTO do?
A. A chief technology officer (CTO) is in charge of monitoring the development and enhancement of technology for external customers, vendors, and other clients in order to help the company improve and grow.
Q. Who is higher CTO or CIO?
A. In most cases, the CIO is in charge of internal IT operations and its strategic value to the company, whereas the CTO is in charge of staying on top of emerging technologies and developing policies and procedures that use technology to improve products and services supplied to customers.
Q. Can you be CIO and CTO at the same time?
A. CIOs and CTOs are required to interact when it comes to technology, blurring the lines between responsibilities at times. Because the jobs are so linked in some circumstances, companies will combine the executive positions.
Q. What does C-level employee mean?
A. The C-level, often known as the C-suite, is a word used to denote a company’s highest-ranking executive positions. The letter C stands for “chief” in this sense, as in “chief executive officer” and “chief operating officer.”
