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Generally speaking if you are capable of leading a startup as a CTO, you should just found your own, with the legal CEO designation, so that you can control what happens to the equity. CTOs in general are very naive about how all of this works once PMF/traction is hit, and how little power they have over the platform they built

Disagree.

I helped found a startup[0] and have been around a number of them, in slacks and on email lists[1].

I think that domain knowledge is so so important for startup success. Even more important than technical expertise.

Why? Because the main problems for 0->1 startups are business problems, not technical ones:

* where do possible customers hang out

* what problems will they pay you to solve

So in that case, a good CEO who knows the domain is critical. They'll have good answers to these questions, which will help guide the technical decisions. Or they'll know who to talk to in order to find the answers. There's no shortcut to that knowledge; you have to spend years to get experience in the domain. Learning and reading about the domain can help, but you still have to spend the time.

The main exception, and it's a big one, is if you are building something in the devtools space, where you can be your own customer.

0: https://www.thefoodcorridor.com/ (I left after a few years, but they are still going strong!)

1: https://ctolunches.com/ (free email list for engineering leaders, so many good discussions happen there)

100% agree. I'm a CTO for a vertical SaaS, working with a first-time founder with deep domain expertise. He came in with a thesis as to why our target customer was still using Excel, even though it was completely unsuited to their needs. Almost everything he thought at the beginning has been borne out, and there's no way I would have figured out this market on my own. There's also no way he would have built a usable product without someone like me - his original plan was bloated and we narrowed it to the core where we have very specific value.

I've been a solo founder as well multiple time co-founder / CTO at venture-backed startups so I'm certainly capable of starting something myself, but I think this combination is an excellent model. A couple of other things that make it work: the CEO has sales skills, and does not have much of an ego and is willing to listen to someone who has been through all of this multiple times.

> A couple of other things that make it work: the CEO has sales skills, and does not have much of an ego and is willing to listen to someone who has been through all of this multiple times.

Yeah! You definitely need to have a good CEO as a partner. A bad CEO is worse than no partner at all.

Those are some great attributes of what makes a good CEO and partner.

I have hardly come across aspiring-CEOs who do not have much ego and listen to other founders, let alone founders or serial-founders. After some founder dating last year, I am a bit jaded, though.

Also speaking from similiar experience, ^^^ this is the best combo. Where both parties have a certain degree of humility and self-awareness and understand how their skills, personalities, and personal circumstances (ability to travel, life stage, etc.) compliment one another.

Right, sure, there is an initial pain of building domain knowledge. But that one year of knowledge building, distribution, early customers, then dominates who has control over the cap table for a decade. Why not just do this work yourself? Its some weird myth that someone capable of being a technical leader cannot also flesh out the distribution

Especially with the existence of AI, it really makes no sense and is some weird hierarchical system built by business people

> Its some weird myth that someone capable of being a technical leader cannot also flesh out the distribution

This idea often gets repeated here but it’s based on ZIRP from 2010s driving up developer salaries to a point where every kid with some portion of a CS degree thought he was the next Zuckerberg. “Technical” contributors became convinced they were the only contributors. Lots of stories about “idea guys” and useless upper management who Just Don’t Get It (meanwhile most guys posting things like this have never even seen a balance sheet). It’s a popular idea here because it establishes devs as the smartest guys in the room, but it doesn’t have a lot of bearing on reality. Plenty of devs have neither the aptitude nor inclination to learn the business side of things, as evidenced by some of the lifers who post here about upper management.

This attitude will change as market cools off, no code and LLM output improves, and overseas contractors become more accessible.

> Especially with the existence of AI, it really makes no sense and is some weird hierarchical system built by business people

LLM code output can be tested as it is generated, whereas its advice on accounting and contract law can only be tested by domain experts, who you can just pay for this advice without involving the LLM.

ycombinator, the best very early stage investors of all time hold this opinion:

"If you are a technical founder, you do not need a non-technical cofounder."

https://x.com/snowmaker/status/1948160642399314188

Its really not up for debate, at this point it is a borderline scam to work for a CEO that isnt significantly better/bringing in capital. You are basically giving them free labor

You don't need a non-technical cofounder, but you do need a founder willing and capable of handling non-technical things.

If nobody in your startup team wants to handle sales, marketing, finances, and business operations, you're going to end up with working software that nobody's paying for.

Maybe AI has changed things, but I think it takes more than one year to gain sufficient domain expertise.

But your argument still has validity even if it takes 2-3 years to gain the knowledge, so let me address that.

My response is: if I wanted to be an expert in <startup domain> to the point I didn't need a co-founder CEO, I would take the time, the years I mention above. But that has costs (opportunity costs if nothing else).

Instead, I prefer to be an expert in software development. This gives me less control in each given startup as you point out, but more optionality across startups (and other companies)[0]. This choice also means that I give input on the hard decisions that company leadership has to make, but I don't have to make the final call. Frankly, that's more weight than I care to bear.

That's a personal choice. I've watched friends be CEOs of successful startups and it's not always (nor usually, even) fun or easy.

0: I wrote more about that optionality here: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3445

> But that one year of knowledge building, distribution, early customers, then dominates who has control over the cap table for a decade.

Can you recommend any resources for learning how to do this work yourself?

I'd recommend:

- the lean startup: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...

- Amy Hoy's blog: https://stackingthebricks.com/

- working in the domain you are interested in for a year. Go be a realtor. Go work in a lawncare business. etc. etc.

- read Patrick's advice about how he found customers for Appointment reminder: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/05/14/unveiling-my-second-pro...

edit: added link to Patrick's piece

One shortcut would be to:

1. pick a vertical (construction, legal, accounting, etc)

2. look at how to apply ai (compliance, voice customer service, email)

3. find sales people from a would be competitor or old school b2b saas in that area, and pay them 150$ an hour to tell you what customers are paying for

4. at the direction of how to do sales, come up with the product and either do the sales yourself without building, or pay someone to do cold calls and pitch the product

5. build the product

The best combination is a technical CEO founder with deep domain expertise. Confirms what you say about the dev tools space exception.

Of which LLMs are effectively a dev tool that happens to also be a tool for every other industry vertical in the world economy.

Just remember that every startup is not a SaaS business...

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There are a lot of defunct startups in my city that were started by engineers and CTOs. Some of them had good ideas and a few even had great execution of the product.

They all failed at sales, scaling, retention, and generally running the business.

I did work for one very successful company that was founded by an engineer. However, he was focused almost exclusively on non-engineering business functions from the start.

If you want to be a CTO and do engineering things, don’t assume founding your own company is the best way to get there.

I believe it depends on the industry your business is in. In many businesses, technology is only a small component, and other factors such as connections, sales, and marketing can be more important than the technology itself.

This may be your option for maximum control and leverage, but do remember that your day to day will be different, especially as the company grows. As someone who enjoys technical/product work and doesn't particularly enjoy fundraising, sales, or marketing, being the CEO is actually quite a trade-off for my personal fulfillment.

Sure, but you should just be aware that "wanting to do engineering" probably is stopping you from financial freedom/a more interesting life. Just be aware of the tradeoff

I find this a cynical and possibly incorrect take. I'll admit, if your goal is to become a billionaire and command vast sums of cash from your many vacation homes I'd agree with you, but financial freedom and an interesting life is absolutely within reach without having to take a career path that doesn't bring you fulfillment. Those CTOs that get pushed out once the company reaches their series C almost certainly achieve financial freedom.

Being the CTO at a company with a handful of people (where everyone likley has a C-title) doesn't absolve you from the responsibility of those tasks though. You really don't get to focus on "only" CTO roles until the company is much, much larger.

One perhaps (cynical) view is that CEOs with business background are basically just arbitraging between investors and product teams.

I'm not sure if it's a cynical view. Isn't it what business guys do in most people's minds? To bring together investment, marketing and product because they don't just magically blend.

I knew someone who chose to major business despite he got an offer for top biology degree in my country, for this exact reason. By the way, when he told me this decision we were both only 17.

(I really should ask whether he still thinks that's what business is all about today though.)

Yes! That’s exactly what we’re doing. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Alot of CEOs dont start out thinking this way, but it definitely occurs to them as they run the business that its the case. Once the platform is built with sticky customers, the CTO is replaceable with a generic high performing engineering manager. Not always, but for run of the mill b2b saas, they are

CTOs just arbitrate between dev teams and product teams.

CPAs just arbitrage between cash flows and legal requirements.

Nah, CTO is usually deep in the code base, hiring, firing, coding, pulling long hours to ship features, etc

Completely different skillsets. Lots of deeply technical startup CEOs kill their startups by not acknowledging that.

I really think society has built some weird narrative that if you did a technical undergrad, you arent fit to run a small startup. Ycombinator busts this myth constantly, and actually prefer technical founders.

Cynical view is that technical founders who don’t know who business work are easier to manipulate into bad decisions for their business, as long as VC makes money.

From 2024. Sorry, should have added that to the title when I submitted it.

I personally loved the takeaways. They resonated with my startup experience, esp: "Not all business problems require technical solutions". I think as devs/engineers, we're in love with technical solutions, but they are not always the right choice. Other options include:

* customer support

* duct tape solutions with platforms like Zapier

* saying "we are not going to solve that problem" and letting folks that need that solution go somewhere else

> saying "we are not going to solve that problem" and letting folks that need that solution go somewhere else

I know more technically inclined than not that can easily identity this situation. At least my CEOs have a tendency toward thinking we should pursue any path that likely leads to some income stream...

That's fair. Depends on the CEO, PMF, and the bank account size.

Sales driven growth is great until it isn't.

I wonder what happened with this current company, helioscompanies.com ? Did it go under and is that why he's looking for a new role?

I respect the honesty that went into that writing.

where does the startup end and the small business begin?

A business is a startup when its goal is to raise investment with the understanding that it will use all the money towards rapid, aggressive growth, and then raise the next, much bigger round of investment, or get acquired, or go bust.

What's the current term then for a newly founded business that is pursuing some other strategy? For instance, bootstrapping to organic growth, or self-funding toward a long-term profitable "lifestyle" business?

Solid definition. Being on the VC treadmill, and all of the “vibes” that come with that, is really what it boils down to.

I like to say a startup is a business where growth is far and away the primary goal and it becomes a regular business as that shifts toward revenue or stability or specialization. I don't think it HAS to be VC but a big chunk of VC cash is a great way to bet everything on growth so it might be the defacto definition anyway and I'm splitting hairs.

Seeking or taking funding is my personal rule-of-thumb.

Good read, thank you. It feels nice to read something that was fully written by an actual human being.