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What Type of Technical Partner Do You Need? (CTO, Eng, Agency)

Author

Harvey Cann
March 04, 2024

As a non-technical founder, you need help.

It’s impossible to code and set up a product all by yourself.

But… where the hell do you find someone to help?

There are 3 types of ‘technical people’ and you need to know which one can help you.

CTO

I think this Tweet sums up the importance of a CTO perfectly…

In my opinion, they’re the most important part of ANY startup.

So, why doesn’t every company have one?

CTOs are extremely hard to come by. They need to be technically gifted enough to build the product and personable enough to converse with customers, partners, and employees.

2 of my friends run a startup. One invested the time to find a CTO, and another that said “fuck it”.

These were the results 👇

Timeline

Company A

Company B

Month 0 - 1

Looking for a CTO… Talking to dozens (maybe hundreds) of potential people until you find one with the right vibe and mentality.

Hired an agency from Upwork and paid $6,000 to get their SaaS built in 3 months.

Month 1 - 3

Still looking for a CTO…. Along the way they’re refining their idea. They have started to prepare for fundraising and created a landing page to start lead gen for their waitlist.

Agency shows some updates of the work in progress. Exciting!

4 Months

Found their CTO! With their refined idea, waitlist, and pitch deck, the non-tech founders rush to start raising $ and starting conversations with customers.

Agency apologizes for the delay. They’re working on it asap.

5-9 Months

MVP has been built. Customers are providing feedback. Investor conversations are happening.

Agency delivers a mostly working product, there are some edge cases that they promise to iron out soon.

9-12 Months

Fundraising completed. CTO has pivoted from being 100% dev to 50% dev and 50% hiring. Product is being improved in iterations accordingly with customer feedback.

Agency starts ghosting the company. They claim it will take more $ and time to finish the product. User feedback reveals gaps in the product feature set. Devs are unresponsive.

12-14 Months

This startup hits nearly $1M in ARR with a team of ~5 people.

This startup tried hiring an offshore dev, they said the code needed to be rewritten completely. And ultimately, the team gave up.

Takeaways

This team went through the struggles of finding a good CTO, who accelerated the company by 100x. At first it seemed like they were falling behind since they had to spend a few months looking for a good CTO. But once they found them, they sped off at the speed of light. Along the way they met dozens (hundreds?) of engineers who didn’t make the cut as CTO, but may be hired as an engineer in the near future.

This team lost $6,000 but more importantly, they lost 1 year of time. The market has shifted, and their product hasn’t. They set themselves up for failure by trying to work with people who were not invested in the product’s success. Along the way they built no connections, lost valuable time, and were ultimately defeated before they even started.

Role of a CTO: In the early stages of a startup, a CTO will be fully focused on developing & improving the product. As the company grows, the CTO will need to be able to manage other devs, designers, and PMs.

What to look for:

  • A naturally curious mindset, they’re always asking questions.

  • They get excited to solve problems.

  • They can break down complex technical talk enough for you to understand— nothing worse than speaking two different languages!

Best ways to find them:

  • LinkedIn - Look for Software Engineers with accomplishments outside of only technology. This could be volunteer work, non-tech jobs, the type of content they post, etc.

  • YC Cofounder Match - This is a bit more tedious but streamlines some of the searching process.

  • Cold outreach - See someone that stands out on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Reddit? Don’t be afraid to reach out.

  • Build a vision for your company - A powerpoint or Figma combined with a crystal vision of the future of your business will make it 100x easier to bring on a CTO.

Contract Engineer

A contract engineer is somewhere between a CTO and an agency. They’re usually paid in cash, maybe with minority equity, but they don’t work for a company (like an agency).

It’s a great choice if you can find someone competent & reliable to get the job done.

Ideally, you’d have a CTO before hiring an engineer, so they can talk technical and make the best product choices together. Leave it to the tech geeks 🤓

What to look for:

  • Same traits as you would look for in a CTO

  • Reasonable pricing that you believe you can pay in the long run.

    • For an offshore front-end dev, expect $18-$25/hr. Onshore (US) is closer to $35/hr.

    • For an offshore back-end dev, expect $20-$35/hr. Onshore (US) is closer to $50/hr.

Best ways to find them:

  • Ask your friends who are software engineers. Chances are they’ve worked with contractors in the past and have a referral.

  • Find them on Upwork (look for INDIVIDUALS, not agencies)

  • Search through Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit.

  • For the interview process, I recommend bringing along a technical friend who can better understand the candidate’s experiences. (or you can email/DM me and I’ll be happy to help!)

Agency

An agency does the vetting of engineers for you, so you can assume that each engineer you’re working with is competent enough for the job. But, makes things a bit slower and more expensive.

With an agency, you’re usually assigned an engineer, you don’t get complete freedom to choose who you get. To be honest, this will only be an issue if you hire an agency with low standards.

That said, I would still highly recommend doing an interview of the assigned engineer to ensure they’re a good fit. You can always request a new engineer if you don’t like what you hear.

What to look for:

  • Don’t get into any shady contracts. Stick to easy-in, easy out.

  • It’s all about reputation. Check their LinkedIn for any of their current/past engineers.

Best ways to find them:

  • Similar searching process to finding an engineer: referrals, Upwork, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit.

By now, you should have a pretty good idea of what type of technical person you need.

But just in case you’re still unsure, hopefully this will help you decide 👇

Building a short-term startup to capitalize on a trend or arbitrage? Hire an engineer/agency.

Building a bigger startup that will require sweat equity up front? Hire a CTO.

Wanting to experiment in a space and see what happens: Hire a CTO that’s naturally curious.

Want the least effort during the hiring process: Hire an agency.

Need technical help on an existing product? Hire an engineer.

Thanks for reading! And if you have any questions/topics you’d like me to cover in future shoot me a DM on Twitter.

Catch you next week 👋

Ryan, The SaaS Guy

Making SaaS less of a pain in the aaS, one step at a time.