The Chief Technology officer (CTO) in a startup is the person responsible for leading the technology side of business.

She or he lays the technology foundation of the business by building architecture, making key technology decisions and guiding the engineering team.

In this blog we give a full view of who the startup CTO is, what they want and how you find them.

We will focus on the CTO that works in a relatively early stage software company.

Startup CTO, who you’re talking to

Most startup CTOs started with building their own applications or writing code for other companies.

Most software engineers already learned to code as kids, so most engineers and CTOs are software engineer by trade.

Some engineers choose to develop into a leadership role and others are more likely to stick with writing code.

The CTO not only is (or was) a great coder, more than anything she’s a great leader.

I started out writing software at the age of 12 and then gradually moved into working on larger and larger projects becoming more of a leader than an individual contributor  — Oskar Stål, CTO Spotify

To be part of the leadership of a startup, you have to have an entrepreneurial personality.

Things go wrong all the time, you have to make a lot of sacrifices and you have to find joy in continuously pioneering into the unknown.

I’m an entrepreneur and hacker — Solomon Hykes, CTO Docker

A lot of good engineers would not necessarily be good CTOs.

Most engineers focus on building great code and are not finding joy in leading a team and company.

But sometimes the line between a coder and a leader is very thin, and a great engineer who loves coding, might end up a great leader later in life.

That’s why you need to understand what to look for in a great startup CTO, what are they able of doing and more importantly, what do they love doing.

Main responsibilities of the Startup CTO

Let's first look at what the CTO actually does in a startup.

Like with many leadership roles within a startup, you have to carry a lot of weight. Because you’re typically not with a lot of people, a lot of responsibilities and activities come down to you.

That also is the case for the startup CTO.

The main responsibilities of the startup CTO are:

• Managing the team: manage the direction and performance of the technology team that usually exists primarily of software engineers, but also for example technical product managers and technical support staff
• Setting out technology vision: set out an inspiring and realistic vision for the technology team to work towards to, align the technology vision with the product vision and company mission
• Building the tech stack: mapping technology architecture and making critical technology decisions like service architecture, data architecture, choice of libraries, APIs and integrations, etc.
• Setting up and guarding guidelines: safeguarding company software development guidelines, principles and way of working
• Introducing new technologies: inspire with new software and tools that the team can implement in the product or use to work more efficiently
• Operating current technology: make sure the solution stays up and running and build in continuity mechanisms
• Hiring: recruiting the best engineers and specialists for the team, assessing candidates and making the final hiring decision