Excel as a Technical Leader
As a CTO, VP of Engineering, or senior technical leader, you need proven frameworks to scale engineering teams; build technical strategy; manage developers effectively; drive innovation and build products that are successful.
This free CTO resource library contains battle-tested guides, templates and insights from real startup experience that can give you a kick start and help you become a more effective CTO. No sign in necessary.
If you find it useful or have feedback, please let me know!
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CTO Fundamentals
6 Types of CTO
If you examine different CTO job roles currently on job boards, you'll find that there's no established job spec for a CTO. The role varies dramatically depending on the type of company. A CTO may be hands-on in one company, and a "big vision" role in another.
Technical Strategy & Planning
Ship Fast, Scale Clean - Building MVPs That Last
Your founder comes to you with the classic Minimum Viable Product (MVP) dilemma. We need to build quickly for speed to market, but make it maintainable so it can scale as we grow.
All Roads Lead to React Native
For a startup, choosing the wrong app technology can cost you millions in burn and years of wasted engineering time.
Buy vs. Build
When you're building a product at a startup, every engineering hour counts. You can't build everything from scratch, but you also can't buy your way out of every problem. The key is knowing where to draw the line.
Creating a Technical Strategy
A technical strategy is an important part of any technical leader's arsenal.
Keeping SaaS Costs Down
It's very easy to fall in to the trap of tool sprawl and escalating costs - particularly in the high speed world of startups. Let's take a look at some techniques we can use to keep a handle on it.
Lessons from Startup Life
Some things I learnt during my time working as tech employee #1 at a startup.
All the Small Things
In a startup it's important to reduce friction. The main asset available to you is to go fast. If you can't do that, you won't beat the competition.
Do You Really Need Your Own AI Model?
With advancements in AI moving so fast, is it worth the return on investment?
Peacetime vs Wartime
Your monolith is buckling under heavy traffic growth. The quick fix is to beef up the server through vertical scaling and buy yourself six months. The right fix is a four month microservices migration that will either save the company or kill it if you miss the deadline. Meanwhile your $2m client is demanding new features or they'll go elsewhere.
Engineering Team Management
Remote-First Engineering at Scale
The pandemic in 2020 changed the world of software development forever, with teams forced to work remotely.
Aligning Leadership Values
How do you align your leadership team when it feels like everyone is working in a silo?
Data, Security & Compliance
Intro to SOC 2 for CTOs
Congratulations! You've reached the point in your business where you are mature enough to start thinking about cybersecurity and security compliance, but there's a lot of new information to get your head around.
Solving InfoSec with AI
Filling in InfoSec surveys is rarely fun at the best of times. How can we use AI to help?
Scaling Systems and Teams
From Sprawl to Structure
The business is growing, and your engineering team is too. Great news - until the sprawl sets in. How can your teams and processes scale with consistency and maturity?