These days, one of the top priorities for most startup founders is finding the right CTO. Early stage startups and non-technical founders struggle to find a suitable CTO given the highly competitive job market in startup hubs such as Silicon Valley, New York and other major cities, with salaries easily going well above the USD 200k mark according to PayScale.
Under this scenario, some founders opt to go to market and look for an interim CTO who can help them deliver their very first MVP until they are able to recruit the right candidate. Even though this figure seems ideal, it’s still very hard to find.
Fortunately, the interim CTO figure doesn’t really need to be embodied by an individual or a jack of all trades technologist. More and more, early stage startups rely on what we like to call an interim CTO team, made up of individuals who can use their collective skills to move the company forward.
Given the tech talent shortage, it’s unlikely that you can meet all of your product development demands by hiring internally, at least not very efficiently. You need to put down a lot of money, time, and considerable effort to source a high-caliber individual like a CTO. This is where the remote interim CTO team comes into play.
Why hiring an interim CTO team might be your best bet
Even though outsourcing and remote work used to face a negative stigma from VC’s, that vision seems to be losing ground as the “Future of Work” highlights the trend of remote work taking over the world labor market and it becomes the new norm.
If the “Future of Work” is already increasingly remote and flexible, why not hire the best you can even if that individual or team is located remotely?
Some may argue that when you are building a startup, you need to build a culture and you require constant face time with your first hires. Although that can help – on the flipside – learning to manage a distributed team early on will make you better on several key fronts, such as making communication a priority, trusting colleagues to act autonomously, and defining a strong culture. When your startup is on growth mode, these skills and experience will help you scale faster as described on a recent article by Venture Beat.
And to name a few examples, companies like Basecamp, Github, InVision, Zapier, and Alegra in Latin America, provide successful role models of companies relying on large distributed teams.
In conclusion
The “Future of Work” is here to stay and startups should embrace the opportunity to reach a global talent pool. The benefits of accessing world-class talent clearly outweighs locality.
Our interim CTO team service can help your company scale faster while finding an optimal balance between skills and rates and leveraging a multi-disciplinary technical team with the broad set of skills you need to bring your product to life.