This is the 75th in a series of business tips from industry leaders that Enterprise Times has interviewed. Enterprise Times recently interviewed Richard Godfrey, Co-Founder and CEO of Rocketmakers. During the conversation, Godfrey spoke about how the software development firm differentiates itself by combining quality, innovation, and purpose.
Rocketmakers has built solutions for both enterprises and startups. Often, entrepreneurs have great ideas but not the technical knowledge to develop them. They turn to Rocketmakers to deliver a solution. Over the years, the company has built a unique approach to intellectual property that ensures startups are not hindered by using a third-party company to build their technology yet enables Rocketmakers to reuse common components for new clients.
I asked Godfrey what advice he would give to an entrepreneur with an idea for a product who doesn’t have a CTO, do they need one?
Advice for a startup
Godfrey replied, “I have a couple of things there. One is around talking to people other than your friends and family really early. People want to tell you what you want to hear. Get something into the hands of people as early as possible, and that doesn’t necessarily need a CTO to do that. Mock something up and put it out there.
“The second thing is, and I’ve been doing this for 15-odd years now, the challenge is rarely the tech. I would worry much more about finding the right sales and marketing approach before worrying about the CTO role. Then I’d probably say, give us a call because we’ve done that interim CTO piece for many, many years.
“My observation on the CTO piece is that you want to be careful what you wish for. What I mean by that is the challenge that a CTO faces in the very early stages of a startup is all about saying yes to everything. (It is about) diving in, moving really quickly, getting things happening as fast as you can, maybe even breaking things in the process. Then, when you get into the early scale-up phase, it’s more about governance and control. Your CTO needs to do a 180-degree flip and their job is to say no to things and to worry about security and control. Make sure that you’re not breaking existing customers’ experiences to go there.
“In my opinion, you don’t want to hire a CTO too early in the process because the personal dynamics of that very early-stage CTO and the later-stage CTO are probably completely opposite to each other. To find somebody who can adapt to both of those, I’ve seen it very, very rarely. Then, getting rid of an early CTO in place of what you subsequently need is a very hard conversation, especially if they’re co-founders in the process. That would be my advice.”
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