Question About Getting a CTO

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1718377

by ch00ey • 16 years ago

1 2 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

All right, so i am currently in the idea stages of the start up still in the midst of learning what Customer Development is and all that jazz. I am also a student at a university, and I'm planning on looking for a CTO/Co-founder at the university as well.

So my question to everyone is; as a student what should I look for in a CTO in regards to education, more specifically should I look at people in Software Engineering, Computer Science or Computer Engineering?

Thanks a TON in advanced!

- Jordan

devmonk• 16 years ago

No idea what the startup is or what you are trying to do, so no idea what you would need in a CTO or why you'd need one before you have anything else.

I worked for a startup where the president/founder of the company's friend created a single webpage for the company with a way to contact him. The domain name was good enough, so that was the start of the tech side. Hard to believe in this day and age, but that was the late 90s. After that, a (young) teenager wrote the webapp that ran the company's primary service. This person became the CTO, then was replaced by the former person who wrote the original webpage (that's right- just a page), but who was a Linux guru, could do the site, basically somewhat handled marketing, etc.

I recently read this: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/13808/The-Magical-Found...

which basically says the founders should be in this order:

1. Developer.

2. Designer / UI / UX person.

3. Inbound Marketer.

4. Sales Person.

One thing I can say for sure is that if you aren't technical and you are going to rely on someone you just picked up to basically run the engine of your company, you may just be dreaming.

If you have to pick anyone, make sure it is:

1. Not a friend

2. Someone you'd want to go camping with and vice versa (Sorry, I can't find the link for where that was suggested.)

3. A combination developer and server/networking geek. For a CTO this day and age in a startup, they should know Linux in and out, OS X in and out (seriously, a good sign is a macbook pro as client), know whatever your site is to be developed in (PhP, Ruby, Java, etc.), DNS, Apache, Passenger, Mongrel2, Tomcat, JBoss, etc. (depending on PhP, Ruby, Java, etc.), understand hosting and cloud services in current day and age, etc. They should live that stuff. There is no major for that. It is just a matter of interest and talent. It could be an English major.

minalecs• 16 years ago

I'm also not familiar with what you're doing, but I think you'd be lucky finding anyone that would be willing to work for just equity for some student. I think you should focus on finding a partnership with someone with some technical skills rather than trying to fill a cto position.

Question About Getting a CTO

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