Startups have been the go-to word in the entrepreneurial world for a few years. And the success of some of the startups, like Open AI, is beyond belief. The US leads the game with 71K startups, and India is at a distant second with over 13K+ startups. What’s interesting about them is that they all started small and made it big.
This is what most aspiring startups want to do now as well. However, as technology has become an integral aspect of startups, starting a business and leading it to success without a CTO or Chief Technical Officer is hard. Hiring an in-house CTO is expensive and risky.
That’s where hiring remote CTO services becomes the most sensible way. With this approach, you can enjoy the technical expertise and insights you need from an experienced CTO without spending exorbitant money on them.
Let’s learn more about building a successful startup with remote CTO services in this blog.
What Is the Importance of CTOs for Startups?
Creating a tech startup is really challenging. One of the major facts that contributes to these challenges is that startups usually need technology to grow and expand.
That’s why not having a CTO can be troubling for your business.
Let’s discuss some of the important ways a CTO can help your startup.
Technical insights and direction
When you have a CTO with you to help, they bring technical insights and direction to your business. Every startup needs technology to help to grow and improve its operational efficiency.
As CTOs already have experience and expertise in the field, they can provide you with the direction you need to take your business forward.
Since the way you utilize technology and its opportunities to grow your business determines the success of your business, the role of a CTO cannot be done away with.
They bring a user-centric approach
For every business to work, they must focus on delivering something that their end users need and will enjoy. That is one of the areas where a CTO can contribute a lot to. When you hire a CTO, they already know what the business must offer to the end users once the audience is defined.
This will help you ensure that you are on the right product development path. Catering to the pain points of the audience is what makes you successful, and a CTO can help you with it.
Technology experience
Most CTOs will have a profound experience working with businesses and leveraging technology to grow the business.
A CTO will have worked already with businesses using technology and know how to use technology in your business. As startups may not always know how to run their business using technology or how to integrate technology into their business, the support of a CTO is crucial.
You can understand business challenges, create action plans, manage risks, and even find the right funding partners if you have an excellent CTO to help.
Communication and negotiation
Startups, as newbies, may not know how to communicate and negotiate with their investors, stakeholders, and other supporters of your business. A CTO can be a huge help in this regard as they bring with them years of experience in communication and negotiating.
This will be a huge advantage for startups that want to bring in more investments and have a strong communication channel with existing stakeholders.
Not having a CTO with you can jeopardize your growth plans for sure.
Related Article: How to Choose the Best eCommerce Platform for Startup Businesses?
Tips to Build a Startup Without CTO?
Not all startups need to hire CTO to make their startups work. If you are a startup and want to know how you can do it, follow the steps below:
Step #1: Conduct thorough market research
The first step in starting your business is to conduct thorough market research. No matter if you are a tech person or not, what the customers need must be your priority.
And you can do this by conducting thorough market research. This will help assess your idea and understand if it is financially viable. When you conduct the research, you get the answers to the following:
- What are the pain points of your prospects?
- How is your product/service going to benefit them?
- How will your product/service solve the prospects’ pain points?
- What are the reasons your prospects will buy from you?
The answers to these questions will lead to your product/service designing phase. Once you have identified and defined these elements, you are good to go to the next step.
Step #2: Create a brand identity for your startup
Your startup needs to have a name, a log, and other brand attributes to make it different from other businesses. Having a mediocre name can alienate your audience from your brand.
At the same time, having a strong, clear, and catchy name will change the name forever.
While branding your startup, keep the following in mind:
- Choose an easy to spell, say, and remember. This will make it easier for the users to remember and spell when needed.
- Let your brand name be broad. You don’t know if you are going to add more services and products to your business. Hence, keep it broad.
- Make it short and concise for the internet. As you need to purchase domains and email addresses, keep the name short and concise for ease of use.
Step #3: Create products and services for your prospects
Although making a profit is the ultimate goal of any business, setting out to do that right from the beginning can be disastrous for your startup. You must first find a product or service that caters to the needs of the prospects.
Focus on the user experience and what problems they face. This will help you impress the audience right from the beginning. The research you conducted early will help you with designing the right product and service.
Once you have a minimum viable product, you can subject it to testing or offer it for beta testing to understand the limitations and areas of improvement.
You may need the help of a CTO at this stage. However, you hire virtual CTO services from startup solutions partner agencies like AddWeb Solution without having to spend a lot of money and time.
Step #4: Choose a reliable technical partner
Having a reliable and experienced technical partner is important for the success of your startup. Whether you are developing a technical product or not, you need to have a strong partner to solve technical challenges, align technology with your business goals, and help you move past your competition.
In addition to helping you with navigating tough situations, a technical partner will also help you lay the path for your growth so that you can align your efforts and resources to your ultimate business goal.
However, finding a strong and expert technical partner is a challenge, but by following the tips below, you can quickly do it.
- Check for startup solutions partner companies that have done this before and have the experience to help you. You can assess a few agencies before deciding to finalize one.
- Evaluate the collaboration and communication skills of the agency you want to work with. Being a technical partner for a startup requires a lot of communication and collaboration. Hence, find out if your picks favor such an approach. If not, move on to the next best fit.
- Assessing the pricing and costing model of the agency is another important factor as you are a startup business. While you may have investments, you may not always have a lot of money to spend right from the beginning. Choose an agency that can work out a costing plan that ensures a win-win situation.
Step #5: Follow the lean startup approach
The idea of a startup is to keep the overheads low so that you can focus on developing a product or service that can help your audience. This is quite the opposite of a traditional entrepreneurial style where you rent an office, human resources, create the required technical infrastructure, etc., even before you have a product or service to offer.
In the lean approach, you start with the most important aspect of your business—the product or service. You may not have a great office or numerous employees to work with. But you will have a core team working on your product or service idea.
You can also have a technical partner to help you with your technical goals. There are many CTO consulting services that can help with startup product development, like AddWeb Solution.
This will help you focus on creating an amazing product or service offering that your prospects need. Or you will end up managing a business that does not have a viable product or service, which is hard to turn into successful.
Related Article: Must-have On-Demand Mobile App Clones For the Startups in 2022
Step #6: Develop an MVP and work it out
Once you have set your branding and product profile, the next step is to get into the actual startup product development stage. This is the most important stage, as you will have a product or service offering good enough to show the world.
The Minimum Viable Product or MVP Development for Startups will help businesses to understand what the prospects need and how much your product is able to cater to their needs. Once the testing is done, you can add more features and other elements to the product or the service to make it even more value-adding.
If the MVP can work well for the test audience and shows potential, you can improve it and transform it into a successful product.
Step #7: Look for investments
This is the most important part of your startup growth. Even if you have small investments in your product or services, you need to secure large investments to take your product or service to the next level.
Having a great MVP can help you with securing investments from interested parties. However, you need to look for investors who want to invest in your product or service because it is promising and has resonated well with the audience.
You can look at the following options for investments:
- Check with your friends and professional networks to see if anyone is looking to invest in products or services. Many successful businesses have raised money from their friends and professional networks to become hugely successful.
- Another option is angel investors who are looking to help up-and-coming startups. They have lots of money with them and have experience with investing because that’s what they do.
- Seed funding firms are another choice you have. You can check with them, and if you can meet them and present the potential of your product or service offerings, you may be able to secure investments for your business.
- Venture capitalists are another category of investors you can approach for investments. Working with VCs is great because they are also interested in growing your business as their investments also grow with your startup.
Conclusion
While hiring a full-time CTO may not be viable for a startup business, looking for remote CTO services to help with its technical direction is crucial. While you may be able to do everything on your own, a lack of profound technical insights and industry exposure may be a challenge you need to tackle with the help of hiring virtual CTO services. And if you are tired of looking for a reliable startup solutions partner, AddWeb Solution has all the CTO consulting services you need.
We have worked with a number of startups in the last few years, offering impeccable and customized remote CTO services as they need. This experience as a startup solutions provider has helped us become the best agency in the market where you can confidently hire remote CTO services.
