Five Years as a Startup CTO: How, Why, and Was It Worth It?
4 days ago
- #startup-journey
- #tech-leadership
- #CTO-experience
- The author reflects on five years since joining an early-stage startup as CTO, navigating through global changes like COVID-19, wars, and technological advancements.
- Initially faced with a poorly built Salesforce product, the author took on the challenge to fix it, leveraging his tech experience despite lacking prior fintech or Salesforce expertise.
- The startup journey involved building a team, transitioning from Salesforce to a custom platform, and securing initial capital, leading to the successful onboarding of clients.
- Key team compositions included Platform (AWS, Kubernetes), Backend (Golang, later considered Rails), Frontend (React), QA, and Design, emphasizing the importance of experienced hires.
- The startup now boasts a team of over 20 engineers, a robust SaaS platform, continuous delivery practices, and a B2C payments product, highlighting the achievements and lessons learned.
- Personal takeaways include the importance of reserves, team building, proactive problem-solving, legal diligence, and maintaining work-life balance.
- The author expresses interest in fractional CTO roles to help other startups, sharing personal highlights and encouraging readers to reflect on their journeys.