As part of the Tech DD by Non-techies series, I’m offering a simple high-level outline for evaluating the tech leadership in very early start-ups without requiring a seasoned technology veteran to run the process.

Early-stage companies have yet to build much and often pivot and discard earlier attempts. The due diligence process typical for auditing more established companies of assessing teams, code and infrastructure won’t be beneficial here.

What’s important at this stage is how to read between the lines and understand the mindsets and philosophical fit that will eventually differentiate a mediocre company from an all-star team.

These three facets will also work for the assessment of any stage team. The main point is that the method is simple, doesn’t cost anything but a bit of time, listening and observation, and can be repeated later.

Look for technology leadership that is commercially aligned and astute, combines strategic and tactical thinking and has an unwavering attention to detail.

THE 1ST CTO TO AVOID: THE NON-COMMERCIAL CTO

The non-commercial CTO doesn’t want to be part of sales meetings – in fact, they prefer to avoid interacting with the sales team if possible. Customer feedback is generally a nuisance that tends to throw project plans off track.

Did You Know?

The non-commercial CTO will slow down your company’s growth. Not being part of the commercial discussion, solutions will take longer to reach the customer, be more expensive than necessary, and commercial opportunities might go unspotted.

In a fast-paced start-up environment, you need technology leadership that can combine an ego-less, prototyping mindset with quickly building strong foundations under the ideas that have traction.
Three things to look for:

Prototyping to test new ideas quickly and cheaply
Data collection that shows what works and what doesn’t
Regular reviews that build solid foundations for the long term under the ideas that work

In a start-up, everyone needs to be commercially minded.

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THE 2ND CTO TO AVOID: THE TACTICAL CTO

The tactical CTO is consumed with and often overwhelmed by ongoing issues – new feature requests, bug fixing, operational problems, meetings. This ship’s crew navigates without map and destination, setting course based on what they can see right here and now. Because the tech and product environment changes quickly and often in a start-up, clear, long-term objectives become even more essential.

Three things to look for:

Written definitions on how to prioritise operational issues
Clear, regularly reviewed and commercially aligned definitions of operational quality
Modelling exercises where what-if scenarios and scalability breaking points are identified and analysed If the CTO doesn’t think about the long-term for the tech stack, who will?

THE 3RD CTO TO AVOID: THE SLOPPY CTO

The sloppy CTO leaves behind them a trail of half-started projects and half-written documentation, generally full of typos and half-baked ideas.

Technology is full of complex ideas and interactions. Communication among the engineers and with the various stakeholders is essential for keeping everything under control.

A start-up tech stack where everything is constantly changing, added to, scaled up and refactored cannot succeed without one primary ingredient: discipline.

Three things to look for:

Complete, up-to-date and typo-free documentation
Processes for meeting deadlines, not feature lists
Written down, policed and reviewed habits In a fast-paced environment, tiny shortcuts and “cheats” will quickly come back to bite you as a tsunami of problems.

TL;DR

When assessing a start-up’s tech leadership, look for the following characters:

-The commercially interested CTO -The strategically thinking CTO -The exacting and meticulous CTO

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Tech DD by non-techies Three CTO types to avoid