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Ask HN: Finding a CTO after your MVP?
Once you've released your MVP and validated user interest, what are the best approaches to finding a CTO/technical cofounder to lead development beyond the MVP?
- gamechangr 6y agoThis may not be helpful, but using your network is the way that most do it. The best fits usually are recommendations from friends.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoI agree. Which makes me mad that head hunters get $20k+ for a placement and companies here in Germany pay $1k if an employee recommends a friend.
- boring_twenties 6y agoYeah that's why you make friends with a recruiter who works with your own company. They'll happily give you $5-15k of their cut, and you get to hire your friend.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoNice hack.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoAs a CTO coach I'd say get a very promising senior developer and coach him ;-)
- atwi 6y agoHow would you approach hiring that senior developer? I am well connected for fundraising but we are still early stage enough that optimally we wouldn't be using a significant amount of money to hire lead developers.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoHave you worked with one before? It's best to hire someone you've worked with in the past. If you don't have work experience it gets more difficult. Before Corona I told people to go where developers are e.g. meetups and conferences and listen to speakers, talk to them and then hire one of them. Now it's a little bit more difficult. When conferences start again (probably too late for you), go to meetups and conferences with a tshirt that says "Looking for a CTO, I'll hand you $10 if you have an interesting CV". Create a coding contest, interview the top five, hire the best. Look at your potential competitors or customers on Linkedin and hire on of their senior developers. But I admit it's currently harder to meet developers.
- atwi 6y agoThanks. I'm wondering specifically in terms of compensation. The reason we are looking for a technical cofounder over hiring developers directly is to have someone who is a co-owner of the business, aligning their interests with ours and allowing us to budget funding for employees and marketing.
- KingOfCoders 6y agoI would think there is little difference, you already want entrepreneurial developers in an early phase startup (later on when you need to hire dozens of developers at a time, there won't be enough entrepreneurial ones). I'd wait until after an larger Angel/VC round, and not get a technical co founder before funding. After funding it's easier to get a better technical co founder for less equity.