I keep seeing early-stage founders stress about finding a CTO. They’re pre-revenue, maybe pre-product, and they’re convinced they need a technical co-founder or they’re doomed.

Sometimes that’s true. But usually? It’s not.

Most early-stage startups don’t need a CTO. They need technical judgment, sure. They need someone who can make good decisions about architecture and tech stack. But they don’t need a full-time executive whose primary job is managing an engineering team.

Here’s what you actually need, depending on where you are and what you’re building.

If You’re Pre-Product

At the idea stage, your technical needs are pretty simple: you need to validate whether your concept is technically feasible and get a rough sense of what it’ll cost to build.

You don’t need a CTO for this. You need a technical advisor—someone who can spend a few hours reviewing your idea, asking good questions, and telling you if there are obvious technical blockers.

This could be a developer friend. It could be a consultant you pay for a half-day session. It could be someone from your network who understands the technical domain.

What you’re looking for: someone who can tell you whether your idea requires technology that doesn’t exist, whether the unit economics make sense given technical constraints, and whether you’re missing obvious technical complexities.

I’ve seen founders spend months searching for a technical co-founder when what they actually needed was two hours with someone who could say “yes, this is buildable” or “no, you’re underestimating the complexity by a factor of ten.”

Get that validation first. Then figure out if you need more permanent technical leadership.

If You’re Building an MVP

Once you’ve validated the concept and you’re ready to build, you need development capacity. But you still probably don’t need a CTO.

What most startups need at this stage is a senior developer or small dev team who can build the first version of your product. That might be a freelancer, a small agency, or a contractor.

The key is finding someone who’s done this before. You want a developer who’s built MVPs, understands the tradeoffs between speed and scalability, and can make pragmatic technical decisions without over-engineering.

You do not want:

• A junior developer who’s learning on your dime
• An agency that treats every project like it needs enterprise architecture
• Someone who wants to build the “right way” instead of the “fast way”

What you want is someone who can get you to a working product in 8-12 weeks using proven, boring technology. Rails, Django, Next.js—whatever they know well and can move quickly in.

This isn’t a CTO role. It’s a builder role. Don’t confuse the two.

If You’re Post-Launch and Growing

Here’s where it gets interesting. You’ve got a product, you’ve got some users, things are working. Now you’re thinking: do I need a CTO to take this to the next level?

Maybe. But probably not yet.

What you need is technical leadership, which isn’t the same thing as a C-level executive. You need someone who can make good architectural decisions, guide your development roadmap, and start thinking about scaling.

This can be a fractional CTO—someone who works with you 1-2 days a week, provides strategic guidance, reviews your tech decisions, and helps you avoid expensive mistakes.

I know three people in Sydney doing fractional CTO work for early-stage startups. They’re working with 3-5 companies each, providing technical oversight without the full-time commitment or cost.

For a pre-seed or seed-stage company, this makes way more sense than hiring a full-time CTO. You get experienced technical judgment without burning runway on a $200k+ salary for someone who’d spend half their time without enough work to do.

What a Fractional CTO Actually Does

The fractional CTOs I know are typically handling:

• Reviewing and refining technical architecture as the product evolves
• Helping evaluate and hire development talent
• Making build vs. buy decisions on infrastructure and tooling
• Providing technical due diligence for investor conversations
• Identifying technical debt that needs addressing vs. what can wait
• Translating technical constraints into business terms for the CEO and board

This is strategic work. It’s not writing code every day. It’s not managing a team of fifteen developers. It’s providing the technical judgment and direction that keeps a growing startup from making expensive mistakes.

For a company with 2-5 developers and under $1M ARR, this is often exactly what’s needed.

When You Actually Need a Full-Time CTO

You need a full-time CTO when:

1. You have an engineering team of 8+ people who need dedicated leadership and management
2. Technology is your core differentiator and requires strategic-level technical vision
3. You’re raising a Series A or beyond and investors expect a complete executive team
4. Technical complexity is becoming a significant scaling constraint

Before you hit these thresholds, a full-time CTO is often overhead you don’t need.

I’ve seen startups hire a CTO at ten people and have that person spend half their time on busywork because there isn’t enough strategic technical work to fill the role. That’s expensive and frustrating for everyone.

The Non-Technical Founder Problem

“But I’m non-technical,” you say. “I can’t make technical decisions. I need someone full-time to handle the tech side.”

I get it. But hiring a CTO because you don’t understand technology is backwards. You’re delegating something you should understand at least well enough to ask good questions.

Instead of immediately hiring a CTO, invest time in becoming technically literate. Not learning to code—that’s not necessary. But understanding:

• How development processes work (sprints, standups, deployment)
• What different types of technical roles do (frontend, backend, DevOps)
• Common technical tradeoffs (speed vs. quality, build vs. buy)
• How to evaluate whether technical work is on track

There are plenty of resources for this. Y Combinator’s Startup School has good content on working with developers. Technically runs workshops specifically for non-technical founders.

You don’t need to become an engineer. But you need enough literacy to have informed conversations and avoid being completely dependent on one person for all technical judgment.

The Equity Problem

Here’s another reason to delay hiring a CTO: equity.

A CTO is typically a co-founder level role with co-founder level equity. We’re talking 10-25% of the company, depending on stage and circumstances.

If you bring on a CTO at the idea stage, that might make sense. You’re building the company together, they’re taking co-founder risk.

But if you’re hiring a CTO eighteen months in when you’ve already validated the market, built an MVP, and have early revenue? They’re not taking co-founder risk. They’re taking a senior hire risk. The equity should reflect that.

I’ve seen founders give away 20% to a “CTO” who joined after the hard validation work was done because they thought that’s what CTOs get. That’s expensive equity for what’s essentially a senior engineering hire.

If you’re going to give someone co-founder level equity, make sure they’re actually taking co-founder level risk and bringing co-founder level value. Otherwise, you’re dramatically overpaying.

What Good Looks Like

The best early-stage technical setup I’ve seen looked like this:

• Months 0-3: Technical advisor (paid consultant, 4-5 sessions) to validate feasibility
• Months 3-9: Contract senior developer building MVP, with technical advisor reviewing architecture decisions
• Months 9-18: First full-time senior engineer hired, plus fractional CTO providing strategic oversight
• Month 18+: Fractional CTO helps recruit and onboard full-time engineering lead/VP of Engineering
• Month 24+: Engineering lead gets promoted to CTO or company hires experienced CTO based on scale needs

This approach means you’re paying for the level of technical leadership you actually need at each stage, rather than over-hiring early or scrambling to fill gaps later.

The Real Question

The question isn’t “when do I hire a CTO?” It’s “what technical leadership do I need right now, and what’s the most efficient way to get it?”

Sometimes that’s a co-founder. Sometimes it’s a fractional advisor. Sometimes it’s a strong senior hire. Sometimes it’s getting technically literate enough yourself to manage contractors effectively.

Don’t hire a CTO because you think that’s what startups do. Hire a CTO when you have a specific need for full-time strategic technical leadership and management that can’t be met any other way.

Until then, there are cheaper, more flexible ways to get the technical guidance you need. Use them.