Hey everyone,
I’ve recently been approached with a CTO position for a startup
I’m currently a student at School 42 in Paris, (renown in France for its really hard software engineering curriculum and also probably the only reason this startup even contacted me) , so I can only commit to a part-time role and not a full time role.
The team is currently three people: a CEO, a co-founder, and a sales manager
Today, the co-founder told me that as the CTO, I’d be in charge of creating the first MVP and automating processes as much as possible. They want the V1 rolling by January.
I’m wondering, like… what am I supposed to do as a CTO in a startup of 3 people ?
What exactly would the role of a CTO entail in this context?
I’m trying to gauge the workload that would come with a part-time CTO position, especially since I need to balance it with my studies since my school is literally for psychopaths
In a startup, the titles are very loose.
In the beginning the CTO is basically a developer.
As you grow to a few more devs, you’re a tech lead and manager.
As you get to maybe 10-20 technical employees, you’re more like an engineering director, but also the company is large enough that you’re doing more high level executive things.
Then as you grow even more, you’ll become more of a full on c-level exec.
That being said, some people are good at being CTO only at certain company sizes. It’s not uncommon for a CTO to become an engineering manager and a new CTO to be hired as the company grows and needs someone different in that role.