# 5 things I've learned being a CTO in startups

DevFeed: [5 things I've learned being a CTO in startups](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/5-things-i-ve-learned-being-a-cto-in-startups-34696.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/unexpected-token/5-things-i-ve-learned-being-a-cto-in-startups-5467a5896396?source=rss----2d2624499d2---4>)

Author: Jean-Baptiste Escoyez

Published: 2015-06-25T13:58:10Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [eFounders](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/efounders.md>)

Topics: [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [business logic](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/business-logic.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [optimize](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/optimize.md>), [App](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/app.md>), [Users](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/users.md>)

Tags: [business-logic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/business-logic.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [cto](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cto.md>), [dev](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dev.md>), [optimize](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/optimize.md>), [productivity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/productivity.md>), [startups](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startups.md>), [users](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/users.md>)

## AI overview

A startup CTO shares two rules for making technical decisions: align engineering work with business and customer outcomes, and organize code into small reusable modules to support speed and flexibility while limiting technical debt.

## Source excerpt

In the past 5 years, I have been Chief Technical Officer of two startups -- one, GoCar has been acquired and one, Solved, has been discontinued -- and helped many others as a technical advisor. What characterizes startups is that they have to ship a lot of results with limited resources. As CTO, your daily job is to lead the technical team, set the goals and take the right technical decisions. You are in a constant tradeoff of immediate speed VS long-term productivity. In this article, I want to share 5 rules I follow in order to make my choices. So far, they enabled me to keep shipping while avoiding to pile up "technical debt". 1. Dedicate yourself to the business The goal of any startup is to build a solution which will bring value to its customers. There are chances that your business co-founder will spend most of his/her time talking to them and understanding their needs. On this basis, your co-founder will set the priorities and report what customers' problems are. Your role will be to find out and build an outstanding product that provides a solution to them. As a technical person, it is easy to get excited by a new technological challenge or a new service that looks promising. When it occurs to me, I ask myself this simple question: "What is the business outcome of what I am doing". This way, I always know if I am working on the right priority or not. At Solved, we even dedicated a weekly meeting with my business co-founder, Thomas, where we were reviewing the features to ensure they match the business priorities. At any moment, I and any member of my dev team could say why we were working on any feature. In order to ensure I did a good job, I was asking myself: how will it delight our users? how will it help our startup to make money? or help our operations team? If you can also answer these questions for your own project, there are chances you are on the right track. 2. Optimize for speed and flexibility In its early days, your startup's main challenge is to