There are no schools on how to be a CTO of startup. CTO's of course are in charge of the development of product. But they are responsible for so much more than coding. This is a guide to help address often overlooked responsibilities. Presented at DreamIT Ventures NYC Summer class '12.

1. How to be a Startup CTO:
Lessons learned from my 2 startups
Ryan Hubbard

2. Who Am I?
• I am You!
 Add 5 years, a little luck & lot of late nights
• 2 Startups – Bootstrapped
 eVariant – MyHealthConnect.com
 YellowHammer Media
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3. Disclaimer
Take what I say with a grain of salt
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4. What is a CTO?
is an executive-level position …
whose … is focused on scientific and
technological issues within an
organization
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5. What is a Startup CTO?
Chief Hat Wearer
• Bringing a vision to reality
• Bridge between Sales/Marketing & Technology
• Support Business Operations
• Sales (Sales Engineer)
• Last Line of Defense
o Unrealistic features
o Downtime
• …..
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6. If You Build It …
They Will NOT Come!
• You can have the best product but no one knows
• Sales & Marketing are more important
• Bridge the gap btw Biz & Tech – Attend Sales Calls!
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7. Supporting Biz Operations
• You’re the most logical, so help w/ process
• Help Company Select the right Software
o CRM
o eSigning
o Project Management
o Email Marketing
o Stay on Top of what others are using
• Empower those users
o Don’t get stuck always doing everything (admin, customizations, etc)
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8. Software
CRM Email Marketing eSigning PM
Salesforce MailChimp EchoSign Asana
HighRise Campaign Monitor RightSignature Pivotal Tracker
Capsule DocuSign
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9. Build It Fast
• Tech wants to build a castle – Keep it simple
o Property architecture, scale, etc
• Biz cannot advance w/o product
o Product can live w/o scale
• 80/20 Rule
• Don’t build what you think you need in 6 months
• You can buy more servers, harder to buy good codebase
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10. …Build It Smart
• Cloud Hosting
o AWS, RackSpace, Heroku
• New Technologies
o BigData – Vertica
o NewSQL – VoltDB, Akiban, MemSQL
o Searching – ElastiSearch
o Web Servers – Node.js
• Don’t be afraid to migrate tech early
• Hybrid Architecture
o Backend - Node.js / Rails
o Database - VoltDB, Vertica
• Look for the right way
o Don’t implement it poorly just cause that’s how you know how to do it
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11. Decision Making
• Use a Point System
o Positive & Negative points
o Apply to everything
• Don’t Procrastinate
o Unless its about a feature you think you need in 6 months
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12. Tech & Dev Ops
• Monitoring
o CloudWatch, Nagios, Applications Manager
• QA / Unit Testing
o TDD, BDD
• Deployment / CI Server
o Capistrano, Jenkins, TeamCity
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13. Always Be Hiring
• Blog
o Business & Tech
• Open Source Projects
o Combover
• Recruiting Events
o NYC Uncubed, Talent Fairs, Local Colleges
• Network, Network, Network
o Meetups, conferences
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14. Thanks!
Ryan Hubbard
@hubmo
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