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Had a "recruiting" call with a CTO yesterday. Halfway through the call he tells me 1) they're not recruiting, and the position I applied to doesn't actually exi

Had a "recruiting" call with a CTO yesterday. Halfway through the call he tells me 1) they're not recruiting, and the position I applied to doesn't actually exist, 2) they're going to run out of money in 15 months, and 3) he "just likes to meet people in the industry" and maybe they'll open a position up. He didn't do anything to steer the conversation after that and it just ended awkwardly. I think people deify execs too much. A lot of the time they're just as clueless as the rest of us.

CityOfThrowaway 4y ago
I think treating "execs" as a category upon which judgment can be passed is a mistake. Every company has different standards. Execs as a general population aren't genius or clueless. You have to get specific about the sub-group. For example, execs at Amazon are likely to be significantly above average in competence. Execs at a 6 month old startup might be anywhere across the spectrum, hard to know.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
100%. Execs are people too. Some effective. Some not so much. That being said, I would use this article to understand 1-1s with effective execs.
- theduder99 4y ago
  there's a book written in the 60s called the Effective Executive which I enjoyed reading.
ryanSrich 4y ago
If a CTO at a company with only 15 months of runway is just doing random recruiting calls then rest assured they have little significance in the company, or the rest of the company has resigned to letting the business fail.
- anamexis 4y ago
  Isn't it pretty normal to do recruiting with a 15 month runway? (Obviously, not normal to do recruiting if there are no positions open)
  - ryanSrich 4y ago
    15 months seems pretty dire imo. The CTO should probably be spending time figuring out what's going wrong. Recruiting with only 15 months of runway feels like they're trying to distract themselves from other fires. This is especially true given the other details provided (not actually hiring, no position).
    - anamexis 4y ago
      15 months seems pretty standard for an early stage startup.
      - ryanSrich 4y ago
        Not in my experience, unless you're very close to raising your next round. 20-30 months is about what I'd expect from a Series seed company in between rounds. 15 months is essentially 1 year. It's going to take 6 months to raise more money from start to finish. That means your actual runway is closer to 9 months. Now of course, they could be excluding current and future revenue, which a lot of companies leave out from runway (rightfully so), but if not, 15 feels low. As things change during this recession, I could see many Seed stage companies pushing to operational break even. If you can keep your annual costs below $1m, and scale to $1m in ARR, you're going to be far better off than companies that have to raise to keep going. If you can grow and sustain the business for another 24-30 months, you'll avoid the game investors are playing now of "let's see how low we can get this valuation".
    - JackFr 4y ago
      It depends on the industry and the level of the conversation. If you're in a specialized field in which as CTO you are not an expert, and you're speaking with a competitor or at least someone else in the field, a detailed interview can offer quite a bit of information. It can be used to validate your approach, your tech stack, etc... Of course typically when you play that game you don't actually admit that you're not hiring and you're running out of cash.

CityOfThrowaway 4y ago

I think treating "execs" as a category upon which judgment can be passed is a mistake. Every company has different standards. Execs as a general population aren't genius or clueless. You have to get specific about the sub-group. For example, execs at Amazon are likely to be significantly above average in competence. Execs at a 6 month old startup might be anywhere across the spectrum, hard to know.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

100%. Execs are people too. Some effective. Some not so much. That being said, I would use this article to understand 1-1s with effective execs.

theduder99 4y ago
there's a book written in the 60s called the Effective Executive which I enjoyed reading.

ryanSrich 4y ago

If a CTO at a company with only 15 months of runway is just doing random recruiting calls then rest assured they have little significance in the company, or the rest of the company has resigned to letting the business fail.

anamexis 4y ago
Isn't it pretty normal to do recruiting with a 15 month runway? (Obviously, not normal to do recruiting if there are no positions open)
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  15 months seems pretty dire imo. The CTO should probably be spending time figuring out what's going wrong. Recruiting with only 15 months of runway feels like they're trying to distract themselves from other fires. This is especially true given the other details provided (not actually hiring, no position).
  - anamexis 4y ago
    15 months seems pretty standard for an early stage startup.
    - ryanSrich 4y ago
      Not in my experience, unless you're very close to raising your next round. 20-30 months is about what I'd expect from a Series seed company in between rounds. 15 months is essentially 1 year. It's going to take 6 months to raise more money from start to finish. That means your actual runway is closer to 9 months. Now of course, they could be excluding current and future revenue, which a lot of companies leave out from runway (rightfully so), but if not, 15 feels low. As things change during this recession, I could see many Seed stage companies pushing to operational break even. If you can keep your annual costs below $1m, and scale to $1m in ARR, you're going to be far better off than companies that have to raise to keep going. If you can grow and sustain the business for another 24-30 months, you'll avoid the game investors are playing now of "let's see how low we can get this valuation".
  - JackFr 4y ago
    It depends on the industry and the level of the conversation. If you're in a specialized field in which as CTO you are not an expert, and you're speaking with a competitor or at least someone else in the field, a detailed interview can offer quite a bit of information. It can be used to validate your approach, your tech stack, etc... Of course typically when you play that game you don't actually admit that you're not hiring and you're running out of cash.