Before I start, I know I should have done this earlier… (Mark Suster’s “hire fast fire fast” is ringing in my ears – trust me!) but my CTO needs to go. He’s incapable of leading, coaching, innovating and staying on top of all of the issues and features we need to fix and ship. He’s strong technically but that’s only part of the job.
What I’ve realized is that his weaknesses have been dragging me in to fight fires to the detriment of the overall business. It’s been building for some time and at first I felt it was because other members we’re not performing – but now it’s clear he’s the weak link. It took me too long to realize this…
Now I have to act. So do I keep him onboard through fundraising and move him out after or get rid of him now? Preference for the latter. I feel we need a change to get us realigned and make us tighter but fear we’ll never raise with such a drastic event happening at a critical time.
But with no cash to hire another and no partner / funding momentum to entice them in, it will be hard to find a strong replacement.
Plan B is to try and close a round and sort this out then. Not a fan of this for hundreds of reasons but also need to keep the business going as I believe we are onto something interesting here and have a number of deals in the pipeline that will move things forward quickly.
Would appreciate some perspective on this. Thanks.