The uncertain road, and some tips for CTO’s

About three months ago, I embarked on this rocky road that is an Israeli start-up in the consumer field. I had no idea what that meant, and I’m still on my way to find out.

First, I had to cast-off my work persona — the one I nurtured for the past 12 years. I realized that many of my old “tricks” about how to become a superstar employee were not relevant in this new territory. Gladly I’m used to just getting the job done, and this is the right attitude for my new role. I find that taking real responsibility for your work and your organization’s success works as an entrepreneur as well as for an employee.

Second, I had to face some of my previous fears — suddenly, I am working on a small scale project that has no significant issues that require high-end engineering skills. That used to be one of my biggest concerns as an employee, the fear of boredom. But I find that I am not bored at all, I am just doing it in baby steps, as a start-up in the B2C field should.

Third, I need to face uncertainty daily. Plans are drawn and thrown away all the time as we move along to find product-market fit. We are already considering a pivot since the market we got ourselves into is quite heroic, and it’s hard to get investments for our idea.

So what can a CTO do in these uncertain conditions? Choose wisely the technology to build your products. I chose react-native for our MVP, with firebase for the back-end. Surely, we will need to write our own back-end for or next versions, but to get quickly to the consumers, it’s just right.
Also, we created an entire CI cycle from day one. This way, I could code review and test the developer’s work as soon as they finished.
To phase the frequent changes in requirements and still be full speed ahead on delivery, I’m using an agile methodology for the dev team. In this way, we managed to get to feather complete while the designer worked parallel to us.