CTO as a Service – What is it and why might startups need it
Do you agree that it’s great to create something innovative, from scratch, which has no analogs in the market? However, behind such decisions are usually not only brilliant ideas but also solid and highly-skilled teams led by an experienced CTO, Chief Technology Officer. Given that not all startups can afford to hire an in-office CTO (due to certain time frames and budget constraints), some of them resort to hiring experts under the CTO as a Service model. We will discuss the benefits of a CTO service for startups below.
Why Is the Distribution of Money So Acute in Startups?
Along with all the advantages of startups, such as the ability to create something useful for the target audience and become the flagship of the market, they also have some disadvantages. The most obvious among them is the problem of proper allocation of budget funds.
Indeed, at first, despite the possible prospects for the success of a startup and, as a result, a large profit, initially few of them can boast of having a large budget, which would be enough “for this and that”. Therefore, their owners have to look for new ways to optimize costs wherever possible.
In particular, no project team can do without a leader who would show them the best way to proceed and be able to become the ideological inspirer of the project with good technical expertise. Hiring such a specialist in the state can take many months. However, even if you find the right candidate quickly, the in-office model of working with them can be prohibitively expensive.
However, there is a way out of this situation – you can get top-notch CTO services for startups and cooperate with these experts remotely, according to the CTO as a Service model. In this case, you will receive the expertise you need and at the same time, you will not overpay for the bureaucratic costs that are typical for hiring specialists for an internal team.
What Tasks Does CTO as a Service Solve?
In a perfect situation, when you hire CTO, you get a specialist who takes control of all aspects related to the use of specific technologies in a startup. Also, the ideal CTO defines and eliminates the “pains” of the business, and also solves problems through certain technological solutions. In addition, this expert can tell you which people to hire, which tools are important to use, how much time it will take to adopt or change specific project features, etc.
The CTO role implies keeping the technology stack up to date and telling you when it needs to be updated and with what solutions. At the same time, all the actions of this specialist are carried out in the context of the startup’s business strategy.
If you formalize skills inherent to the CTO service, they include all those that make these experts good software engineers, project managers, and software architects. Also, CTOs must have their own vision of how the project will develop in the future, which means that it’s required for them to have leadership and strategic thinking skills.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, thanks to modern technologies that allow effective remote interaction with teams, currently hiring a full-time CTO is no longer the only viable model for startups. In particular, you can discover the option of working with a virtual CTO in the CTO as a Service format to get all the benefits that a specialist of this level can bring to your project at a minimal cost. If you consider this type of collaboration, feel free to contact us.
