Hey everyone,
I’ve recently been approached with a CTO position for a startup
I’m currently a student at School 42 in Paris, (renown in France for its really hard software engineering curriculum and also probably the only reason this startup even contacted me) , so I can only commit to a part-time role and not a full time role.
The team is currently three people: a CEO, a co-founder, and a sales manager
Today, the co-founder told me that as the CTO, I’d be in charge of creating the first MVP and automating processes as much as possible. They want the V1 rolling by January.
I’m wondering, like… what am I supposed to do as a CTO in a startup of 3 people ?
What exactly would the role of a CTO entail in this context?
I’m trying to gauge the workload that would come with a part-time CTO position, especially since I need to balance it with my studies since my school is literally for psychopaths
Something to consider is how this looks on your resume. CTO at 19 just screams BS. You’d genuinely be better getting an “intern SWE” or even “Junior Developer” title - you can take that with you and build on it.
They want you to work for free, their idea will probably fail anyway, just stay in 42 for now
CTO / founder here. For an early stage 3 person startup you should expect to do every technical task the company requires.
You should expect that nobody knows their knees from their elbows about what needs to get built.
You should expect to build and rebuild and rebuild again.
Pros:
You will learn a LOT. Your hands will be everywhere and mixed up in everything. Great experience for future jobs.
Cons:
It will likely consume all of your time, and you probably wont make much money.
As a technical person, early stage startups can be quite frustrating as what you and your cofounders think the product should be, probably isnt. So youll have to rebuild over and over again.
If you choose to proceed, please make sure you get a good chunk of equity, or a good salary ($ is unlikely). You will have one of the largest workloads on the team, so it is important to make sure you feel it is worth your while (and to justify the opportunity cost).