Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#1

Post by navaneethpk » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 12:23 PM UTC

Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?
nvnt.substack.com

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#2

Post by atdrummond » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

This was a great post that actually is undersold by the title. Any aspiring solo founder should read this, as ToolJet’s founder has provided a great roadmap to getting to product market fit - and understanding the trade offs and concessions a solo founder must make. It absolutely matches my own experiences and expertly lays out the growth plan for a software firm that’s bootstrapping and dogfooding off of a single person. Well done Navaneeth.

Will absolutely keep this in my personal list of articles for friends and acquaintances looking to start their own firms.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#3

Post by navaneethpk » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

atdrummond wrote: post #2

This was a great post that actually is undersold by the title. Any aspiring solo founder should read this, as ToolJet’s founder has provided a great roadmap to getting to product market fit - and understanding the trade offs and concessions a solo founder must make. It absolutely matches my own experiences and expertly lays out the growth plan for a software firm that’s bootstrapping and dogfooding off of a single pe…

Glad that you found the article helpful :)

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#4

Post by intelVISA » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

#1 is too true, it's a nightmare to try find someone suitable & non-technical to augment any dev tooling (or similar) venture IME

How did you handle the VC raise or were you entirely bootstrapped?

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#5

Post by moralestapia » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

>do not nitpick - every fight is not worth picking

This is quite valuable. Great article Navaneeth, thanks for sharing.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#6

Post by navaneethpk » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

intelVISA wrote: post #4

#1 is too true, it's a nightmare to try find someone suitable & non-technical to augment any dev tooling (or similar) venture IME How did you handle the VC raise or were you entirely bootstrapped?

I've written another article that explains how we raised seed round here: https://blog.tooljet.com/raising-vc-funding-for-open-source-...

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#7

Post by dadoge » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

Interesting…maybe we should normalize/de-stigmatize Dev tooling companies to have a ceo who is an eng for the first ~ 3 yrs, and then hiring a replacement (maybe even some early “vp of product person”)

There are probably so many good ideas that devs have, but they don’t have enough interest in being a ceo of a big unicorn company, but understand the problem and can get a prototype up with no red tape

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#8

Post by intelVISA » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

navaneethpk wrote: post #6

intelVISA wrote: post #4

#1 is too true, it's a nightmare to try find someone suitable & non-technical to augment any dev tooling (or similar) venture IME How did you handle the VC raise or were you entirely bootstrapped?

I've written another article that explains how we raised seed round here: https://blog.tooljet.com/raising-vc-funding-for-open-source-...

Thanks :) grats on the succesful launch

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#9

Post by kukabynd » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

This is an excellent and pragmatic way of looking at scaling team as an engineer. The defragmentation comparison really demonstrates this clearly, thank you for sharing this.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#10

Post by lokimedes » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

Does anyone have similar recommendations regarding sales, marketing and other business critical functions? As someone contemplating the hard roads of B2B and non-SaaS , I feel a lack of basic advice on going from idea to revenue.