Can I hire two CTOs for my Startup?
I would like to prevent being dependant on one CTO, because fast and efficient progress is too important. Is it possible to hire two CTOs at the beginning? Or will it be similar to hiring two senior developers, who will then fight the whole day about decisions and be less efficient than one CTO?
Thank you for your input.
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Can you clarify what you mean by CTO? In my world CTO is a board level company leadership role... having two doesn't really make sense. – Adrian Howard 12 years ago
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man, it sures makes me smile when I see that the place I am setting my first steps into is not so filled with all round, well versed entrepreneurs. – Kellogs 12 years ago
2 Answers
CTO is acronym for "Chief Technical Officer". While it is possible to have more than one Chief, it is unusual (and usually comes with "Joint" or "Co-"). However it happens. Research In Motion (the makers of Blackberry), for example, has 2 co-CEO's.
As to whether they'll fight all day... CTO aren't developers, they're leaders and managers (in their technical fields). You can have one work on one line of products, the other on another, so that they won't interfere with each other.
If all they are going to do is write code - then they're not CTO's, really, so why call them that?
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I disagree with the sentence "If all they are going to do is write code - then they're not CTO's,". In early technical startups quite often 80% of CTO job could be writing a code. Sure, as soon as company become bigger they start spending more time as managers, visionary etc. – Victor Ronin 12 years ago
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@ZZZ then they're not CTO's in these early stages. I mean of course, its just a title, you can call yourself a CEO and think you're the same as Larry Page with your one-man smart phones app gig, but its not really the same. If you're calling a developer "CTO" when all he does is coding - its just to make him feel better and more appreciated, it doesn't reflect what he really does. – Littleadv 12 years ago
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2littleadv: Yeah. I partially agree. In no way they have responsibilities and experience of average or big company CTO. However, they aren't developer either. The level of decisions (what to do, how to do, whom to hire, technical vision) is much higher than usual developers have. – Victor Ronin 12 years ago
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@zzz I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. Are you the OP? How do you know what is the level of decisions the people the OP is talking about have? And, are there only two titles, "developer" and "CTO", that you must use one of them? What happened to managers, directors, seniors, VP's, executives, etc...? – Littleadv 12 years ago
Rather than calling them CTO's, why don't you name them as VP's of Technology (or something similar)? Or name one as a VP and the other as a CTO.
It really depends on your specific scenario though, if they're going to be in charge of two different products or areas, than they're better off being VP's, if they're going to be in charge of technology as a whole, they would be Co-CTO's...although one (or both) of them might take it as an insult to have a co-CTO with them.
