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Bad CTOs mean startups have millions of dollars’ worth of cap table dead weight
- tzhenghao 3y ago> In many cases, however, that’s not what happens, and the CTO was basically the smartest person with a CS degree standing close to the CEO when the company was formed. The end result is that a lot of startups wind up giving a huge chunk of equity to someone who is essentially doing a job a semi-decent engineer could have done. I think fundamentally (early stage) CEOs are judged the same way as well right? First time founders, especially the CEO, having to figure out sales and GTM etc. - very rarely do they get it right the first time. I certainly didn't. That's the risk of running a startup and investing in a startup. As the company scales, both CEO and CTO have to grow into their "new" roles every 6-18 months anyway. So, it's weird to single out the CTO, or really any founding member at all for "cap table dead weight".
- wmf 3y agoOriginal paywalled source with less spicy title: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/17/evaluating-cto-venture-capital/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/17/evaluating-cto-venture-cap... This sounds like it refers to what we would probably call non-tech startups and is less likely to apply to tech startups.
- al2o3cr 3y agoStanding around making money on the deal while being basically useless? Who do these CTOs they think they are, VCs?