HACKER Q&A
📣 ashkan15

Should I hire a CTO or two founding engineers?


Hi HN - I'm a nontechnical founder currently building a marketplace, am getting early customer validation talking to users, and have capital committed ahead of our first round of funding from Angels.

Have solo founders in similar situations approached derisking their company by hiring 1 early CTO or finding 2 founding engineers?

I'm leaning towards CTO but want to double-check for feedback here. Part of the reason I'm looking to add to the technical side now is to build the initial version of the product beyond the spreadsheets I have and make us more likely to get into YC.

Regardless we'll keep burn low so it's enough cash for this person to meet minimum living needs and more upside play with equity until we hit milestones for the next round and then can raise cash comp.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

  👤 danielovichdk Accepted Answer ✓
Not a CTO.

Hire 1 developer and only build what is actually measureable towards your users. Not anything else.

Use tech that has proven stability and do not go into esoteric territory.

You can come a long way with html, css, js and a bit of backend and sql.

A CTO is something you add a much larger stage.

👤 aaronrobinson
IME it’s very hard to persuade CTOs and good engineers to come for high equity low comp but perhaps you’ll have better luck. From your description you just need someone to build something for you - CTOs tend to be a bit more removed from the coal face and have a wider ranging skill set so I’d focus on just finding someone who can build what you want. And I’d start with one rather than two engineers and pay them better. You need someone product focused too - you just need stuff build quickly to a stage where you can obtain funding
👤 andrewfromx
Two founding engineers, and if you can get two that have worked together in the past and work well as a team, wow.
👤 leed25d
I would vote for two founding engineers. It is best in my view to have several people who know the code base. That opinion is only worth $0.02 (if that) no charge.