[SkyPuncher]

The cool things about startups is you have room to learn as you grow. You just have to remember to be intentional about learning as you grow.

I co-founded a company a few years back as the CTO with qualifications closer to you than some Big Tech rockstar. I read a lot of books (audiobooks) and learned as I went. The best thing about being at ground zero is that’s it’s likely just you, your co-founders, and maybe some contractors. You don’t have to worry about leadership, management, or any of the things that come with leading large teams.

If I could only give two pieces of advice:

* As CTO your job is both product and engineering. In fact, product is massively more important until you get to roughly Series A. While you will likely need to write code, your primary job is to find and talk with customers. Amazing code without a customer is worst than shit code with a customer. Customer. Customer, customer.

* Your job is to optimize for the success of the company, not you or your team. That means you need to be aware when something is better done by someone else (aka hire or contract out)

Books:

* the lean startup

* anything by Marty vegan

* a bunch of others, but read those two first.

[SkyPuncher]

> * anything by Marty vegan

Lol. Sorry about this, I was typing this on my phone while eating dinner.

Marty Cagan is the author. Inspired and Empowered are the books.

[nivertech]

I think "The Lean Startup" is kind of outdated novadays.

I'm not sure the author himself still adheres to it.

[SkyPuncher]

It depends on the business context you're going into. I’d you’re going into a completely novel space, it’s still an extremely valuable approach. If you’re competing in an existing market, with a twist, it’s far less necessary.

I still like to recommend it because it fights the tendency for technical people to over build and get lost in the weeds. You see it all of the time on HN. A Show HN that lands flat because the author didn’t figure out if people actually want the product.

I think the Marty Cagan books are a good pairing. They’re a step up from lean, but still follow the principle of ensure you’re building what your customer wants.