Hi there,
I am a curious about what tasks/responsibilities you as the CTO have (besides obvious tech related things). Do you also talk to clients, pitch to VCs, get angels on board etc? What about business plans, financials etc? How did you split these tasks?
How do the responsiblities shift when being in early stage and no more funding is required?
I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the tasks. Especially in the beginning it seems that responsibilities kind of overlap on many parts.
Would be awesome if I could connect with some other CTOs here :)
CTO/Co-founder here, hi!
Short answer is “yes, all of the above, for as long as it takes”
I think the longer answer is that it depends on the founding team. In my case, my partner and I have neen working together for many years and we’ve learned how to divvy up the work.
In general I think as a co-founder you will be expected to talk to investors, partners and customers/prospects. The level at which you’re expected to lead these conversations goes back to the composition of the founding team.
Part of of growing the company is identifying the organizational gaps, and making plans for filling them. Not only is that important for your sanity (you can’t do everything forever), but investors want to know how you’ll be spending their money.
The cool thing about being a founder is getting to hire for the work you don’t love doing, but, it takes time to get there.
My example:
Day 1: I installed the security cameras in the new office
Day 50: I surveyed customers
Day 200: I wrote all our code
Day 500: I wrote the grant proposals
Day 800: I pitched to investors
Now I have hired people to do all of those things and I mostly just manage them.