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This reminds me of how I have seen a few asks lately for roles where a company is looking for a CTO for their “AI startup”. How an “AI startup” (whatever that m

This reminds me of how I have seen a few asks lately for roles where a company is looking for a CTO for their “AI startup”. How an “AI startup” (whatever that might actually mean) can _start up_ without a CTO is beyond me, and raises some very big red flags about what that company might be up to.

rimeice 2y ago
Founding “CTO” might be more suited to a “Head of Research” role as the company grows beyond a few engineers.
dcow 2y ago
It’s not necessarily a red flag. Sometimes the founder/CEO is technical and decides to solo it with hired engineers until not having a real CTO is a flight risk, or until they’re too busy to be contributing code anymore, or both.
- matthewsinclair 2y ago
  That is fair, assuming the CEO is technical, or technical _enough_. However, I see a lot of non-tech CEOs trying this on and in those cases, it is a red flag for me.
  - p1esk 2y ago
    With cofounders it’s fairly typical for one to be technical and the other business savvy.
captaincaveman 2y ago
Mostly someone has a Phd and convinced people to give them money to 'change the world', then need someone who has actually built things beyond a script in a python notebook.
- matthewsinclair 2y ago
  Gosh. So much this! The difference between the "average" PhD graduate in data science and the "average" software engineer with genuine experience delivering production software that people use at scale is quite something. I have nothing against data scientists, but in the same way that I wouldn't get a software engineer to build a complex model (above a certain level of complexity), neither would I get a data scientist to build a production app (above a certain level of scale). Both of these things are specialist activities that require a lot of experience, wisdom, and nuance to get right. Being good at one does not (necessarily) mean you will be good at the other.
throwAGIway 2y ago
That's simple - they find a CTO. The really hard thing is marketing and closing big clients.
- matthewsinclair 2y ago
  This is true, but it also depends. There are a lot of "tech businesses" that are actually using pretty pedestrian tech. What they are _actually_ doing is business model innovation with an underlying tech platform. Often, that tech platform can be commodity or relatively simple tech. There are other startup propositions, though, where the tech _is_ the thing, and if you get the tech right, then some of those other things end up being secondary (not irrelevant, of course) just not primary. This is assuming that you really have punched a hole thru the door with some amazing deep tech breakthrough, which not every company is doing, contrary to what they may claim. There is a YouTube video [0] (which goes back to 2019) that does a pretty good job of making this point. Well, much better than I can. To be fair to your original point: you're right that marketing and sales are hard. I'm just adding the subtlety that there are some tech businesses where the tech is _also_ hard, and perhaps even harder. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DlZWfI6rk&ab_channel=YCombinator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DlZWfI6rk&ab_channel=YComb...
  - throwAGIway 2y ago
    I don't think we disagree. There are definitely deep tech businesses that are very hard to pull off. My point is - asking "how did they do it without a CTO" is weird, they are hiring a CTO to do it, and they're bringing their business experience and funding - valuable stuff that a tech guy probably finds annoying. The number one suggestion on this forum is to sell before building and when somebody does it, users get wide eyes?
    - matthewsinclair 2y ago
      I guess it comes down to what "it" is. My sense (and this is just a personal orientation) is that if a CEO came to me and said, "Hey, I need a CTO for this new business I'm building", the very _next_ thing they say is really important. If it is a) "Right, I've had this braingasm, and you need to build it, and for the privilege, you get 5% of the company!" versus b) "Right, I've had this idea, done some market validation, lined up our first 3 customers, and now we need to do some technical feasibility and put a team together to build this, and as CTO, I need a 50/50 founder, what do you say?" then I will pick b) over a) every time. To be fair, those scenarios are cartoons on purpose, but I just wanted to make the point by highlighting the extreme cases. As far as "sell before you build" goes, I think that really does depend on the problem you're solving. If it's a tech-powered business model innovation (where the tech is a commodity), then we are in 100% agreement. If the tech is a bit trickier and you need to show something special before funding (let alone clients), then I take a slightly different tack. I'm not sure I get the last point about wide eyes, but I suspect it's immaterial to the bigger point.
closeparen 2y ago
The AI technology consists of templating out ChatGPT prompts.

rimeice 2y ago

Founding “CTO” might be more suited to a “Head of Research” role as the company grows beyond a few engineers.

dcow 2y ago

It’s not necessarily a red flag. Sometimes the founder/CEO is technical and decides to solo it with hired engineers until not having a real CTO is a flight risk, or until they’re too busy to be contributing code anymore, or both.

matthewsinclair 2y ago
That is fair, assuming the CEO is technical, or technical _enough_. However, I see a lot of non-tech CEOs trying this on and in those cases, it is a red flag for me.
- p1esk 2y ago
  With cofounders it’s fairly typical for one to be technical and the other business savvy.

captaincaveman 2y ago

Mostly someone has a Phd and convinced people to give them money to 'change the world', then need someone who has actually built things beyond a script in a python notebook.

matthewsinclair 2y ago
Gosh. So much this! The difference between the "average" PhD graduate in data science and the "average" software engineer with genuine experience delivering production software that people use at scale is quite something. I have nothing against data scientists, but in the same way that I wouldn't get a software engineer to build a complex model (above a certain level of complexity), neither would I get a data scientist to build a production app (above a certain level of scale). Both of these things are specialist activities that require a lot of experience, wisdom, and nuance to get right. Being good at one does not (necessarily) mean you will be good at the other.

throwAGIway 2y ago

That's simple - they find a CTO. The really hard thing is marketing and closing big clients.

matthewsinclair 2y ago
This is true, but it also depends. There are a lot of "tech businesses" that are actually using pretty pedestrian tech. What they are _actually_ doing is business model innovation with an underlying tech platform. Often, that tech platform can be commodity or relatively simple tech. There are other startup propositions, though, where the tech _is_ the thing, and if you get the tech right, then some of those other things end up being secondary (not irrelevant, of course) just not primary. This is assuming that you really have punched a hole thru the door with some amazing deep tech breakthrough, which not every company is doing, contrary to what they may claim. There is a YouTube video [0] (which goes back to 2019) that does a pretty good job of making this point. Well, much better than I can. To be fair to your original point: you're right that marketing and sales are hard. I'm just adding the subtlety that there are some tech businesses where the tech is _also_ hard, and perhaps even harder. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DlZWfI6rk&ab_channel=YCombinator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1DlZWfI6rk&ab_channel=YComb...
- throwAGIway 2y ago
  I don't think we disagree. There are definitely deep tech businesses that are very hard to pull off. My point is - asking "how did they do it without a CTO" is weird, they are hiring a CTO to do it, and they're bringing their business experience and funding - valuable stuff that a tech guy probably finds annoying. The number one suggestion on this forum is to sell before building and when somebody does it, users get wide eyes?
  - matthewsinclair 2y ago
    I guess it comes down to what "it" is. My sense (and this is just a personal orientation) is that if a CEO came to me and said, "Hey, I need a CTO for this new business I'm building", the very _next_ thing they say is really important. If it is a) "Right, I've had this braingasm, and you need to build it, and for the privilege, you get 5% of the company!" versus b) "Right, I've had this idea, done some market validation, lined up our first 3 customers, and now we need to do some technical feasibility and put a team together to build this, and as CTO, I need a 50/50 founder, what do you say?" then I will pick b) over a) every time. To be fair, those scenarios are cartoons on purpose, but I just wanted to make the point by highlighting the extreme cases. As far as "sell before you build" goes, I think that really does depend on the problem you're solving. If it's a tech-powered business model innovation (where the tech is a commodity), then we are in 100% agreement. If the tech is a bit trickier and you need to show something special before funding (let alone clients), then I take a slightly different tack. I'm not sure I get the last point about wide eyes, but I suspect it's immaterial to the bigger point.

closeparen 2y ago

The AI technology consists of templating out ChatGPT prompts.