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
Practically you’re probably considered free programming labor rn.
They can’t, or don’t want to, pay for any development, so they get someone in charge of tech and expect them to do the work of a 5+ person team.
When you’re done they’ll probably do anything they can to replace you and make sure you don’t get any future money by getting you out before any cliffs etc.
Without knowing the people involved it’s hard to tell. But if I were to take a guess, they’re throwing the CTO title so they don’t need to spend $$ to hire a full time dev. So you’ll be doing dev work for the most part.
42 Silicon Valley alumni here. Get through hard assignments together see how you work together and personality benefit each other.
Something to consider is how this looks on your resume. CTO at 19 just screams BS. You’d genuinely be better getting an “intern SWE” or even “Junior Developer” title - you can take that with you and build on it.
From the sound of it you’re being offered an inflated title in exchange for building everything. I’d recommend focusing on school and making good friends with your classmates.
The more capable you become the more you’ll be approached by idea people & moneybags. There’s no need to rush your schooling or hamper your experience there.
As a former founder, and national recruiter, this is really close to my heart. Startups are intensely time and energy heavy, with painful learning curves for years. Most startups can’t afford to pay for resources they need, for a long while. Unless you can leverage the startup load, with/against class projects, you’ll be essentially doubling your present workload. It might be worth it to take a few meetings, but, at this stage, don’t get distracted from your personal goals.
It’s fine if you get it in writing, but if they know what they’re doing they can easily screw you. I lost $12M in a similar way.
If you believe in the product, you could try it.
However, as others have pointed out, likely they need some free labour.
What I’d do to make sure they’re not screwing you is ask for vesting shares. Sign on for 2.5% of the company, then at every 12 month interval get another 2.5% to 10% (example numbers, but I wouldn’t take less than 10% for free labour).
Make sure to get a lawyer to look at the contract, no dilution options for forced sale options for the others.
In a startup, the titles are very loose.
In the beginning the CTO is basically a developer.
As you grow to a few more devs, you’re a tech lead and manager.
As you get to maybe 10-20 technical employees, you’re more like an engineering director, but also the company is large enough that you’re doing more high level executive things.
Then as you grow even more, you’ll become more of a full on c-level exec.
That being said, some people are good at being CTO only at certain company sizes. It’s not uncommon for a CTO to become an engineering manager and a new CTO to be hired as the company grows and needs someone different in that role.
CTO / founder here. For an early stage 3 person startup you should expect to do every technical task the company requires.
You should expect that nobody knows their knees from their elbows about what needs to get built.
You should expect to build and rebuild and rebuild again.
Pros:
You will learn a LOT. Your hands will be everywhere and mixed up in everything. Great experience for future jobs.
Cons:
It will likely consume all of your time, and you probably wont make much money.
As a technical person, early stage startups can be quite frustrating as what you and your cofounders think the product should be, probably isnt. So youll have to rebuild over and over again.
If you choose to proceed, please make sure you get a good chunk of equity, or a good salary ($ is unlikely). You will have one of the largest workloads on the team, so it is important to make sure you feel it is worth your while (and to justify the opportunity cost).
They want you to work for free, their idea will probably fail anyway, just stay in 42 for now
You’re free labour.
You would be defining the architecture and implementing it. That said, I think it is basically impossible for this to turn out good. Imagine putting someone who has never seen combat, on the front lines, by himself… He’s going to make costly mistakes that a startup can’t afford to bear.
They are just looking for cheap labor and they don’t know what they need. It’s actually laughable they want a junior level dev to pull off an MVP by January - beyond the most rudimentary app.
Is the business idea viable; do you actually believe it will be successful? Are you willing to code the entire thing by yourself on your free time and potentially drop out of school if it becomes profitable? If so, then go for it.