The CTO follows the cohort along the lifecycle of the cohort. She is in charge of the pace, the spirits, the objectives, the organization of all functions, and the coaching/training of the founders and more junior resources. She gets unique perspective on how to get from zero to one on a technological subject.
... know that lifting up the spirit of the whole team is as important as delivery
... know how to recognize moments of uncertainty and fully embrace it
... are able to understand deeply the business context and derive best tech actions from it
... are able to bring A level players to their teams
... are able to recognize the best tech stack needed and always up to date on technologies
... are able to manage and organize a high performing team with the resources available
... know that process and excellence are as important as results
... code and uphold best practices in coding
... get results on a consistent basis.
... bring negativity to their teams and do not manage their self emotions
... do not manage uncertainty and do not recognize it
... only focus on tech aspects and do not care about anything else
... only bring B and C level players
... only code what they know and nothing else
... always ask for more budget and do not manage their teams
... do not respect process nor explain why a process should not be respected
... do not recognize the importance of good coding practices
... get inconsistent results.
Soft skills
Grit
Convincing
Management
Coaching
Organization
Empathy
Hard skills
Coding
Architecture
Financial (basics)
Activities
Team organization
Coaching / Training team
Coding
Architecture
Client facing
Career path
CTO of a larger company
Distinguished engineer
To us, the most useful resource to become a full-fledged CTO is : https://github.com/kuchin/awesome-cto
Additional resources