Intellectual Frontiers Press
The CTO You Actually Need
How to Hire, Work With, and Evaluate the Right Technology Leader for Your Business
A plain-English guide to hiring and evaluating a CTO, with AI exercises for every major decision.
The CTO title covers very different jobs. A startup builder, SME technology leader, business-unit CTO, enterprise strategist, and fractional adviser can all be excellent, but not for the same company at the same time.
Forthcoming. The book is in review; its companion and tools are open now.
Define the CTO job your company needs done, hire the right person for it, and build a working relationship that holds up through hard decisions.
The CTO You Actually Need gives founders, CEOs, boards, and business leaders a plain-English process for defining the role, gathering evidence, hiring the right person, and evaluating the appointment after 90 days, 180 days, and one year.
Thirty-three ASK YOUR AI FOR HELP exercises adapt the book’s tools to the reader’s own company and leave the final decision to a person.
The CTO title hides radically different jobs. A startup builder and an enterprise strategist can both be excellent, but never for the same company at the same moment.
What you will be able to do
- Decide whether you need a CTO, CIO, VP Engineering, adviser, or another leader
- Replace or reposition a founding CTO without creating a shadow role
- Choose among startup, SME, business-unit, enterprise, fractional, and full-time models
- Avoid common hiring mistakes: being swayed by charisma, crediting a famous company’s results, and hiring for the symptom
- Write a first-90-days agreement and set up a working routine between CEO and CTO
- Evaluate the role with 90-, 180-, and 365-day scorecards
The premise
The CTO title hides radically different jobs. A startup builder, SME technology leader, business-unit CTO, enterprise strategist, and fractional adviser can all be excellent, but not for the same company or moment.