Thread by @andreasklinger

Got a several good (CTO-related) questions from portfolio companies of VCs i work with.

Would love to share them here, plus my answers:

> What defines a good culture/environment to keep team motivated and innovative?

Be honest, aligned and trust your people as if they'd be the highly intelligent adults they are.

> Top 3 skills an engineer must have?

The ambition to work with what she knows, the ambition to learn what she doesn't, the honesty to communicate when either of those stop.

> What is it that you take the most into account when picking up a new technology?

That technology in the end usually never matters

> Hiring full stack devs or highly specialized programmers?

See a team as a complementary group of different skills, characters, backgrounds and povs but skew on generalists.

> Best way to orchestrate a fast growing team? Small teams? Experiences?

clear separation of decision authority (who decides what)
clear higher level vision (where do we go)
clear strategic/execution goals (what did we agree on)

> How to identify when is necessary to fire someone?

If you lose trust
If you the context you provide cannot enable them to do good work

output = context X individual

> If you got a chance to do it all over, what would you do different?

I'd do more bigger swings, more often and focus less on safety

> What is the most challenging thing about traction?

Being scared it will stop before you learn how to control it.