Interview Your CTO

Have you interviewed your CTO lately?

I was reminded recently of some advice that I gave recently on Vator.TV.  The advice is that you always need a “Starsky to your Hutch.”  Meaning that you always want a business guy/gal combined with a technical guy/gal in a technology startup. 

I was reminded the value of this when I talked to the WidgetBucks’ CTO, Greg Harrison.  We’re working on a super interesting optimization technology and I realized that there are some many valuable insights when you constantly talk to your technology “Hutch.” 

I often have technology “Charlie Rose-like” interviews with Greg so that I make sure that the technology matches the business needs. 

I often find the following:

• We find holes – each of us find either technology our business holes in our product strategy.  By walking through the requirements, constraints, and roll-out we often build a better product.

• B.S meter – We will often clarify capabilities that are too much of a stretch from a positioning perspective. C'mon we all know that engineers always tell the truth.

• Gold nuggets can be found – often times I find little nuggets of capability that are important from a business perspective than what the tech guys believe that are important.

If you are a startup CEO, please interview your CTO.  You and the business will be wiser for it.

Comments

[David C]

Good advice Matt. I would add that CTO's should also ensure that these types of conversations are happening on a regular basis. It's encumbent on both leaders to make this partnership a two-way relationship and to always seek out feedback to calibrate the technology and business strategies.

[Marcelo Calbucci]

Great points Matt.

As a CTO I find that I perform the best decisions in terms of functionality and design when my CEO says "Why not to this way?" or "How hard would it be to do X?".

Then suddenly the feature is upside down and much better and/or simpler.