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How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

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How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

#1

Post by naamicas »

So, I'm a fullstack dev. I've worked at startups, worked at small and medium companies, and worked as a contractor.

I'm currently working as a contractor exclusively, and really would like to found (or cofound) a company this year. I can contribute 40+/hrs a week to this.

I would really like to found a small company that is tech-focused, with a stack that can be maintained by 1-2 devs. I am not looking for investment, IPOs, whatever. Just a sustainable SaaS (or otherwise) that can do 10-50k revenue per month on the longer term.

My main problem is that my real passion and interest lies in web technology itself, not something that is _delivered by_ web technology. I am fully confident I could CTO a small enterprise and build an effective product, I just don't know what that product should be. Do I simply need a business-minded cofounder?

Re: How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

#3

Post by avaer »

If you don't know what area you want to work in, you should go find the communities that interest you and engage with them. This is regardless of whether you're looking to collaborate, or to solve someone's problems professionally.

Also, throw your contact information into the world. Fruitful relationships have started just like that, even on HN.

Re: How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

#4

Post by bdiu »

Given your goals and interests, I would focus on building a focused solution for a problem you see in and around the work that you've done in the past.

Focusing on a problem space you understand and you yourself might be a potential customer for gives you a lot of advantages. If your solution can accomplish two big goals 1) make developers happy and 2) increase efficiency (reduce bugs, make releasing functionality faster, etc) then you'll have something worthwhile on your hands.

From a pure operational perspective, building a single focused tool that is low cost enough for a solo developer to gladly pay for or for an employee to gain easy sign off on will make support and sales much easier. By focusing on a simple solution, you also limit the breadth of the functionality you have to maintain. This will allow you to focus on refining and improving the value proposition and help minimize spaghetti code. It also makes growth possible with a small team.

A good example of this might be jell.com which helps teams handle standup and work visibility. Making a SaaS product with a low initial cost means you accumulate revenue over time. Compared with traditional software/app sales, you have a much easier path to sustainable monetization.

Good luck on the effort. I also recommend reading into the lean startup methodology and taking small iterative steps and measuring their impact to get started.

Re: How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

#6

Post by CyberFonic »

Short answer: YES you do need a competent business minded cofounder.

Technology is a component of many solutions to real world problems. It is a common trap to have solutions in search of problems.

Perhaps you could look at your past contracts and identify which industries you enjoyed working in the most. You could then go back and talk with contacts you made in those industries. Based on those conversations you might be able to identify people who have a big problem that you can help create a solution for.

BTW you mention having a couple of devs, etc. Do you have funds to pay salaries for them or do you need the cofounder help you with getting starting capital? The more people you expect to work for 12+ months for sweat equity alone, the less likely you are to be able to successfully launch a new business.

Re: How to find direction as a prospective CTO founder?

#7

Post by soneca »

I believe you would enjoy building a developer's tool startup. The only problem is that developers are a hard consumer niche to get revenue from. Not impossible, but harder than, say B2B.

I am building myself a SaaS product with the same goal of a significant monthly revenue, but no explosive growth. If you want we can exchange ideas on how to find a good product to build and how to build it (from a business point of view). My contact is in my profile.

Good luck!

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