We live in the age of Unicorns and tech disruption — and this trend is showing no sign of cooling off. New tech ideas appear almost every day, while about 50% of startups fail in the first two years.
For a successful startup, it is important to have a technical expert that has profound expertise in sorting out technical issues, understands all stages of product creation, and will be able to manage the tech team and the product development.
Those startups where the co-founder is a technical specialist have more chances to develop a product on time, not miss the window of opportunity and save money on development. For those who do not have a strong techy on board, there is a way out. It is called CaaS or “CTO as a service”.
Let’s see now how this service, may lead your product development to prosperity.
What Is CTO as a Service?
What does CTO stand for? CTO as a service or CaaS is a service that allows startups to hire a CTO as a consultant for solving technical issues and managing the product development process from a technical perspective.
The CTO’s amount of hours depends on the current startup’s goals and roadblocks. Both options are possible: full-time or part-time.
You definitely need the CTO service if:
You came up with a product idea that will change the market, but you don’t know how to deliver the technical part;
You understand the business, marketing and you know how to bring a product to market. But to get an investment, you need to understand the technical part of the product and you need techy support;
You have a great team of developers, but you can’t check the quality of the code yourself;
You need clear guidelines for the development of an MVP product and you do not want to hire a full-time expert;
You and your team have a technical background, but you need to move faster and solve technical issues more effectively;
You have an MVP version of a product and need to upgrade it with additional features and integrations.
Depending on the size of the startup and its business goals, the responsibilities of the Chief Technology Officer may vary. For example, on a pre-seed stage, CTO will build the product architecture, select the tech stack, and manage the team of developers or even delivering the product by himself. While on the expansion stage the CTO will manage tech departments, implement cutting-edge technologies and track the team progress. Read more detailed info about CTO’s roles and responsibilities in our recent blog article.
Benefits of CTO as Service for Startups
Below you can see the benefits of CTO as a service for startups:
Operational expenses
The CTO will build all IT processes, plan the budget for product development and optimize the workload of tech specialists — all these steps will help to reduce costs.
Risks
The CTO will protect the company’s security and will have a plan B in case of disaster. Thus, this specialist will reduce or mitigate the startup IT risks.
Digital Transformation
The CTO will lead digital transformation, implement cutting-edge technologies to the product or new vital integrations to improve business performance and startup competitiveness.
Talent Management
The CTO will help startups to retent skilled employees, develop them by building mentorship programs, improving the team’s hard skills, and hiring the right candidates.
Transparency
The CTO will prepare the necessary tech documentation and implementation strategies for investors and stakeholders. It will help to build a good relationship with investors.
Thus, hiring the CTO enables startups of all sizes to cut expenses on development, get high-quality expertise, save time on development stages, prevent failure, and adapt quickly to changes. All factors mentioned above have an impact on startup product, performance, costs, and success.
Need more technical expertise? Contact us and let’s discuss your product idea.