Evolution of a role as a Founder CTO
Miguel Carranza, co-founder and CTO of RevenueCat, maps how his job changed over three years: from shipping the MVP with a team of five after Y Combinator, to stopping coding entirely as the team reached 19 across six time zones. His view is that a founder CTO should do whatever has the most impact at each stage, not what they enjoy most.
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Key takeaways
- Expect things to start breaking somewhere around 8 to 12 engineers, and plan for it.
- Set up an on-call rotation early; Carranza says waiting too long was a mistake.
- Technical debt is a fair trade while you search for product-market fit, if you manage it.
- Once a manual process works, automate it, and spread knowledge so no one person is a single point of failure.
- Delegate when you're too deep in the work to see the big picture.
Who it's for
Technical co-founders at seed to Series A wondering when to stop coding and start managing.
Why it's worth your time
It gives real team sizes and timings for each stage, which makes the transition concrete.
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