# A CTO's Personal Journey Through Startup Leadership and Development

DevFeed: [A CTO's Personal Journey Through Startup Leadership and Development](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-true-story-the-life-of-a-cto-26130.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/hackernoon/the-true-story-the-life-of-a-cto-a5792e90c836?source=rss-8735065c2497------2>)

Author: Yonatan (Yoni) Levin

Published: 2018-08-28T19:06:14Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Stories by Yonatan V. Levin on Medium](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/stories-by-yonatan-v-levin-on-medium.md>)

Topics: [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Back end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/backend.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>)

Tags: [blog-post](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog-post.md>), [cto](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cto.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [entrepreneurship](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/entrepreneurship.md>), [journey](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/journey.md>), [personal-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/personal-experience.md>), [product-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product-management.md>), [startup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startup.md>), [startups](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startups.md>)

## AI overview

The author reflects on becoming a CTO, describing how the role differs between startups and large companies. The account covers responsibilities spanning product, technology, management, development, investors, and meetings, along with the author's experience moving from Android development into backend work and startup leadership.

## Source excerpt

Around three years ago, a day I will never forget, a day that changed the course of my life. Marked the beginning of both my personal life (the day that my dear daughter was born) as well the day that the legendary entrepreneur and investor -- Eyal Gura called me and asked me to join the visionary team at KolGene together with Dan Faszczyk and build a revolutionary idea -- a marketplace for genetic tests which turnout to be a platform to managing all genetic tests of the hospital. And the rest is the history :) KolGene's magic This post will not focus on how we raised our first seed round (but we did!) Or about how we made a successful pivot and acquired our first customers (hard work!) and all of the other fuck-ups we encountered along the way. But rather, about my personal journey to becoming and being a CTO. I was recently invited to talk with Zell students about what it means being a CTO in a startup world. While preparing for the presentation I became inspired to share and write this blog post. Not the same CTO The first thing you need to understand is that a CTO position ranges from company to company (Like every position!). For example, a CTO of a small startup is very different to a CTO of large corporate company. The first requires you to do everything -- from the product, tech, managing and of course developing all by yourself. While simultaneously acquire investors and attend meetings. While a CTO in a large corporate company is far more tech only oriented, where your main responsibilities are to find out the right tech stack for a company product and explain it to the rest of the companies stakeholders. Prelude: Personal experience I was lucky enough to be able to observe various CTO's in different companies embarking on different stages: from corporate to fast-growing startups like Gett. But, since this is mostly about my journey let's talk about my personal journey to becoming a CTO. For years I was "the" go-to guy, the guy that everyone looked to for sol