On occasion, the CTO is more operational than innovative. As your company approaches the B round, companies typically start to see challenges within engineering operations and solve for those issues by promoting someone from within or hiring a VP of Engineering.
He or she leads engineering operations through the series A round. If you’re a startup with a strong technical component, one of your founders is generally a CTO. As a result, they’re always building the next great solution. CTOs are always thinking about innovation and new product directions. They are highly knowledgeable about the market, are experts in modern development technologies, and understand the current players in the space. Chief Technology Officer (CTO)Ī CTO is a visionary-plain and simple. I’ll cover the answers here and include “back of the napkin” compensation information for the average small to mid-sized company (obviously, it can vary extensively from an emerging Series A round company to a large company).
Originally published on LinkedIn by Paul Manning, Managing Director, Software & Technology at The Bowdoin Group.