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Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

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Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#21

Post by mannyv »

mannyv wrote: post #19

The important point here is that he got funding first, and it sounds like at least half a million because he didn't talk about begging angels for money or running out of runway. He was able to hire someone fast. You won't be this good/lucky. In the traditional non-traditional startup you need a salesperson and engineering to be free, because money. I suppose with dev tools you can get rid of the salesperson because y…

FYI, people believe that dev tools don't make money, but atlassian, pagerduty, zendesk, etc show that there is a market.

And most tools kind of suck.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#22

Post by didgetmaster »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #13
didgetmaster wrote: post #11

It seems to me that every great tech company needs two things to get off the ground. A product that actually works well and execution on the business side. Few people have the skills to do both of these things well. Apple got started with the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak). One built the first couple of computer designs. The other was a sales and marketing genius. If you have a product that is possible to launch in ju…

Link to your project (if it has a site)?

https://www.Didgets.com Here is a short demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ScBd-71OLQ

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#23

Post by mannyv »

mannyv wrote: post #21
mannyv wrote: post #19

The important point here is that he got funding first, and it sounds like at least half a million because he didn't talk about begging angels for money or running out of runway. He was able to hire someone fast. You won't be this good/lucky. In the traditional non-traditional startup you need a salesperson and engineering to be free, because money. I suppose with dev tools you can get rid of the salesperson because y…

FYI, people believe that dev tools don't make money, but atlassian, pagerduty, zendesk, etc show that there is a market. And most tools kind of suck.

As a note, if you're in a startup you have no idea how far ahead of most developers you are.

I keep forgetting that most developers throw their stuff over the wall to IT and probably don't have a ci pipeline, do IaC, , and probably don't deploy their own microservices or understand the AWS stack. They probably have a 60% chance they use source control instead of just copying folders and changing the folder name. They don't do logging or security. They scale by buying bigger instances. Docker is their current tech boner instead of puppet.

Although pathetic, it is an opportunity.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#24

Post by navaneethpk »

mannyv wrote: post #19

The important point here is that he got funding first, and it sounds like at least half a million because he didn't talk about begging angels for money or running out of runway. He was able to hire someone fast. You won't be this good/lucky. In the traditional non-traditional startup you need a salesperson and engineering to be free, because money. I suppose with dev tools you can get rid of the salesperson because y…

The part where I begged for funding is another story: https://blog.tooljet.com/raising-vc-funding-for-open-source-...

Also the link to HN launch that helped a lot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421408

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#25

Post by freedomben »

mannyv wrote: post #23
mannyv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, people believe that dev tools don't make money, but atlassian, pagerduty, zendesk, etc show that there is a market. And most tools kind of suck.

As a note, if you're in a startup you have no idea how far ahead of most developers you are. I keep forgetting that most developers throw their stuff over the wall to IT and probably don't have a ci pipeline, do IaC, , and probably don't deploy their own microservices or understand the AWS stack. They probably have a 60% chance they use source control instead of just copying folders and changing the folder name. They…

This is true, but most of those devs are in that situation because they want to be. They have less than zero interest in taking on more. Often these people also value job security/stability above advancement/novelty. Many of them also do coding only while at work, and if they will learn a new skill/tech it will be because their employer is paying them to. Often this group will not follow any tech news/blogs/anything and isn't even reachable.

In short it's a pretty tough group to market to.

To be clear, I'm not making a value judgment on this. If those people are happy with life, that's great! That's mostly the point IMHO.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#26

Post by e1g »

navaneethpk wrote: post #24
mannyv wrote: post #19

The important point here is that he got funding first, and it sounds like at least half a million because he didn't talk about begging angels for money or running out of runway. He was able to hire someone fast. You won't be this good/lucky. In the traditional non-traditional startup you need a salesperson and engineering to be free, because money. I suppose with dev tools you can get rid of the salesperson because y…

The part where I begged for funding is another story: https://blog.tooljet.com/raising-vc-funding-for-open-source-... Also the link to HN launch that helped a lot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421408

It’s perhaps worth highlighting how much of an outlier your experience was - having a social circle to intro investors, inbound interest, and closing a $1.5M institutional seed round within two weeks is a highly atypical trajectory for solo founders with negligible traction.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#27

Post by freedomben »

matchagaucho wrote: post #17
didgetmaster wrote: post #11

It seems to me that every great tech company needs two things to get off the ground. A product that actually works well and execution on the business side. Few people have the skills to do both of these things well. Apple got started with the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak). One built the first couple of computer designs. The other was a sales and marketing genius. If you have a product that is possible to launch in ju…

Developers selling to Developers is the exception. There are many talented Sales/Marketing people. But few who can effectively target Developers. The Authors path of bootstrapping via open source is a known tactic/strategy. Ultimately growth will require directly approaching other Developers with a commercial proposal.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Developers are extremely difficult to market to if you're not a developer yourself. It can be done, but very few sales/marketing people will be successful unless they have much experience in it. The reason why is that developers break all the rules you learn in marketing departments and schools. What works with normal people will not just be ineffective on devs but will actively repel them.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#28

Post by blumomo »

> if someone from the team steps up and adds a lot of value that is expected from a co-founder, we will definitely promote the person as a co-founder

How can someone get the title of a cofounder of an already (at least) 2 years old company which is already set up an running? I understand that traditionally this person then represents in investor meetings, but why does it need to be a _founder_ title of something that was founded long ago?

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#29

Post by navaneethpk »

e1g wrote: post #26
navaneethpk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part where I begged for funding is another story: https://blog.tooljet.com/raising-vc-funding-for-open-source-... Also the link to HN launch that helped a lot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27421408

It’s perhaps worth highlighting how much of an outlier your experience was - having a social circle to intro investors, inbound interest, and closing a $1.5M institutional seed round within two weeks is a highly atypical trajectory for solo founders with negligible traction.

> having a social circle to intro investors

> with negligible traction

Disagreeing to these two points. The traction from HN & ProductHunt launch was good that ToolJet got 1000+ stars on GitHub in under 8 hours. The intros were made mostly by great open-source founders who were totally strangers at the time who discovered the project mostly from HN.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#30

Post by CalChris »

blumomo wrote: post #28

> if someone from the team steps up and adds a lot of value that is expected from a co-founder, we will definitely promote the person as a co-founder How can someone get the title of a cofounder of an already (at least) 2 years old company which is already set up an running? I understand that traditionally this person then represents in investor meetings, but why does it need to be a _founder_ title of something that…

Agreed. To me, a co-founder is anyone pre-money. Anyone post-money is an employee.
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