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As a current founder and CTO-by-title of a product company (http://first.io http://first.io), I think you're missing one path the founding engineer can take: ru

As a current founder and CTO-by-title of a product company (http://first.io http://first.io), I think you're missing one path the founding engineer can take: run Product. Whether that eventually becomes a Chief Product Officer or Head of Product or whatever, the founding engineer often has a very strong sense of where the product needs to go and as the organization grows, they ship less code and instead drive prioritization and teams that execute on the higher-level product vision. At least, that's what I'm trying to do. We'll see how it goes! :-P Oh, and I have an awesome VPE already, which is a relief!

mooreds 9y ago
That's fair. I think that running product takes a lot of customer empathy and you're right, the founding engineer can definitely be the customer advocate. One worry I have would be whether someone in that role would be too interested in the 'how' of building, rather than the 'what' and the 'why' which are so important for product. Hope it works out for you! Another role I left off was CEO, but that one seems less likely than product.