Editor’s Note

The headline of this newsletter is a bit dramatic I have to say.

The news certainly isn’t all sunshine and roses at the moment now is it, but do I think this is a moment of crisis? No.

Having said that though, many of the business leaders I’ve spoken to this past month are not the most optimistic people. The rise in the living wage, the reduction in the NI threshold and the corresponding increase in the rate of employer’s contribution has knocked the wind out of most small businesses I know and the shenanigans going on across the pond isn’t helping to lighten the mood music.

What I find quite striking is that if I compare this to 2008, when there was a real financial crisis, business leaders today are more pessimistic than I felt they were back then.

Now that is something.

Why is this? Well, I think most of us business owners have had enough. You work hard, are constantly squeezed, are befuddled by red tape and are never recognised as the true engine house of the economy - we are a nation of shopkeepers after all.

Instead, we’re the villain that isn’t paying enough, isn’t training enough, isn’t giving enough time off and worst of all, isn’t contributing enough, we are, apparently, all fat cats taking long holidays. When was your last break?

So what do we as business owners do?

We keep calm and carry on and this month, I have an interview that I think you should all listen to, as it will put things in perspective.

This month, I interviewed a friend of mine - Dominic Courage, who for the past decade has been working for Save the Children in some of the worst crises zones that humans can generate and from him, I extract titbits of knowledge that will help all business owners navigate through whatever you want to call these current times.

For me, the most relatable analogy he gave is that when you’re in the crisis, its like you’re on the balcony and the dancefloor at the same time - you need to be able to remove yourself from the activities in order to give yourself the best view of what is going on.

It’s a great interview and one I am sure will give you all something to mull over as you’re staring at your spreadsheets this April, wondering where all the money has gone.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

What if your team doesn’t want to improve? It might not be laziness, it could be overwhelm, a hostile environment or a disconnect with the end goal. Here are some tips about how you can create some space for a team to explore improvement without pressure. 😇

The system of work has long relied on IT leadership getting rewarded for operational performance, cost savings and control. But now, IT leaders need to focus more on responding to the chaotic business environment rather than simply acting as project delivery managers. 🚢

This article looks at the four main approaches to building reasoning models so that you can learn how to enhance LLMs with reasoning capabilities. 🧠

The Anthropic Economic Index is an initiative aimed at understanding AI’s effects on labour markets and the economy over time. The team behind Claude has published an initial report here. 🤖

Slowing down before making a tech or digital transformation decision means you’ll waste less money, and avoid bigger problems down the line. Read Bhairav’s full insights here. 🧘🏽

Atom CTO Podcasts

Crisis Management: Lessons from a Humanitarian Leader🚰
Dominic Courage, formerly of Save the Children and presently Deputy Director of External Relations at the Humanitarian Leadership Academy talks us through what business leaders can learn from a humanitarian crisis.

Aligning Tech and the Business 🕹️
Hear from Tech Executive Consultant Aviv Ben-Yosef about how CTOs can address the challenge of tech being seen as just a cost centre and how to shift perceptions towards it being more of a driver for growth.

AI Shopping Revolution 🛍️
Bhairav is joined by founder Phil Mpofu to talk about how AI is reshaping the ecommerce ecosystem but how it always boils down to the same thing: solving real problems for real users.

Webinar: How to Build Products People Actually Need 🍯

On Thursday 6th March, Bhairav will be hosting a webinar with product expert Diana Matei where they will explore practical strategies for gathering meaningful customer insights, validating assumptions, and creating solutions that resonate with your target market. Sign up to the webinar here.

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

My advice to you - slow down! After two decades of guiding companies through digital transformations and technology implementations, I've observed a consistent pattern: rushed decisions almost invariably lead to costly corrections, missed opportunities, and frustrated teams.

When business owners rush into technology decisions, they often fall into what I call the ‘immediate action trap’. This mindset prioritises action over direction, and creates a need to be doing something as soon as possible.

This can lead to several critical issues:

Misaligned Solutions: Without proper discovery and analysis, companies often implement solutions that solve symptoms rather than root causes. I recently worked with a business that wanted to implement some very expensive software because that’s what they thought they needed, after some investigation, I found that they could implement something much cheaper, if they changed their internal processes.

Technical Debt: Quick decisions frequently result in architectural compromises that become expensive to maintain and modify. These "temporary" solutions have a way of becoming permanent fixtures, limiting future growth and adaptability.

Resource Drain: Rushed implementations often require more resources to fix and optimise post-launch than they would have needed with proper planning. Companies ignore the one golden rule of software implementation and that is that it costs at least 10 times more to fix issues in a live platform than fixing them before you go live.

The Benefits of Deliberate Decision-Making

Taking a more considered approach to technology decisions will lead to substantial returns that compound over time:

Better Understanding and Alignment

When organisations slow down to analyse their own needs, they often discover requirements they hadn't considered. This deeper understanding allows them to:

- Articulate clear success metrics

- Identify potential integration challenges

- Understand the full scope of user needs

- Map dependencies across systems and processes

Improved Vendor Relationships

Time invested in vendor selection and communication creates means that companies can take time to:

- Thoroughly evaluate potential partners

- Clearly communicate their vision and requirements

- Understand vendor capabilities and limitations

And as a result, they will experience more successful implementations and stronger long-term partnerships.

Cost Optimisation

While careful planning might seem to delay progress, it actually creates more clarity and a better direction for the team. Organisations that take time to plan typically experience:

- Lower implementation costs

- Reduced need for post-launch modifications

- Better ROI on technology investments

- More predictable ongoing maintenance costs

How to Make More Thoughtful Technology Decisions

Whether you’re the CEO, the CTO, or even a non-technical leader, I recommend following this structured approach which will help you and your team make better technology decisions:

The key here is to set out dedicated time to consider what the problem is and explore how it can be solved.

Discovery Phase

At this initial stage, you and your team are gathering information about the business from several different sources. Involve as much of the team as you can in order to get a broad understanding of the current situation and how it affects every stakeholder.

Document current processes and pain points: What’s working and what isn’t working so well, where are the sticking points and what needs to be improved?

Gather input from all stakeholder groups: What is everyone’s experience of the process, what workarounds are they using?

Define clear success criteria: What do you want to achieve, do you want to save time, increase customer satisfaction, reduce staff turnover? A bit of everything?

Map existing technology ecosystem: How is the existing tech working together and where are the gaps and inefficiencies?

Analysis Phase

Once you’ve collected all the information in the discovery stage, you need to look at it in context and consider which improvements are possible.

Evaluate multiple solution approaches: Don’t be restricted at this stage by costs, consider every solution and how it can help to overcome your problem.

Consider build vs. buy options: Don’t rule out building your own tech, everything at this stage is up for consideration.

Identify potential risks and mitigation strategies: For each solution, consider the pros and cons of each.

Selection Phase

Next comes the decision-making stage. After carrying out the discovery and analysing possible solutions, you’ll feel better equipped to make an informed decision on which tech will help you move forward.

Create detailed requirements documentation: Go over every stakeholder and user’s needs so that you have a thorough view of the requirements.

Evaluate vendors against consistent criteria: Create a scoring system so that you can directly compare suppliers and their solutions.

Conduct thorough reference checks: Chances are that you’re putting significant spend into this project so you need to be sure that everyone involved is going to deliver as promised.

Plan for implementation challenges: You’ll likely have to put up with some short-term disruption and therefore a plan to make sure that the business can continue and customers can be serviced without being impacted.

The Long-Term Perspective

Technology implementations are not isolated events but rather strategic investments that impact your organisation's future. My structured approach might seem lengthy but I can assure you that a few extra weeks of planning at the start will prevent years of struggles with unsuitable solutions!

Key Success Indicators

Organisations that take time to plan their technology investments typically see:

- Higher user adoption rates

- Better alignment with business objectives

- More scalable solutions

- Lower total cost of ownership

- Increased competitive advantage

In the technology landscape, the old adage "measure twice, cut once" has never been more relevant. While the pressure to move quickly is real, the cost of hasty decisions far outweighs the temporary discomfort of taking time to plan properly.

By adopting a thoughtful, strategic approach to technology decisions, organizations can ensure they're not just moving fast, but moving in the right direction.

Remember: The goal isn't to be first to implement a solution, but to be the one who implements the right solution in the right way.

Editor’s Note

I don’t think I’ve had a conversation this year that hasn’t involved AI, well, I exaggerate, I haven’t had many client conversations where AI hasn’t popped up on the agenda.

Is it going to transform businesses? Yes.

Are people going to lose their jobs? Yes.

Will your life be ruled by robots? Only if you let it.

AI tools are becoming more and more accessible each day and with the advent of agentic AI you can now have AI perform tasks on your behalf much more easily.

So what does all this mean for you dear reader? Well it means that you can no longer sit on the fence, you’re going to have to get involved (and at the bottom of this newsletter you have some links to handy tools you can play around with).

Having said this, we aren’t quite there yet.

Yes, there are a lot of great tools coming onto the market but many of them work around the edges of your business and what your teams do on a day to day basis. They are aides and not replacements for teams.

Sure, if you have the money that Klarna has, you can replace a fair amount of headcount but most companies don’t and so what you need is to make your teams more productive and doing more high value work rather than replacing them and this is the key to successfully implementing AI.

We talk to businesses every week that think that AI is a silver bullet that will solve many problems but it won’t, not yet. If you are thinking of deploying your own models then unless you have a spare million in the bank, you should think twice because AI is not a one and done.

What we find that people overlook is that models need constant training, just like humans they need to constantly learn in order to stay relevant which means that you are going to need to have experts in your business for the long term.

The other thing I feel people overlook is the human factor - there are some tasks that people do that make them happy as they are part of their jobs. The race to automation may take away some of the things that make people love their jobs, some tasks might be mundane but they can also be very satisfying.

Over the coming weeks we will be releasing a series of podcasts dedicated to AI, we’ll be explaining AI in the clearest language possible as well as giving you an understanding of what it takes to implement AI, machine learning, computer vision in the real world.

It is getting easier and quicker but not necessarily cheaper…

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Are you a budding AI engineer? Then read this curated list of necessary reads for AI developers. It’s very extensive, but also quite intimidating. If you don’t know where to start, scroll down, there are some useful tips and links. 🦾

Are you looking to implement AI into your organisation? Thinking of building your own RAG implementation? Well think again….. 🤯

Want to experiment with AI in your business? The Neuron has handily compiled a list of top tools that you can implement within your company. 🛠️

A new year is a chance to review our purpose and focus, You have 2 choices, you can react to what happens, and you can create what happens. Read how you can become more intentional this year and get what you want. 🌈

What are investors opening their wallets for? This article from VC Labs breaks down the VC trends for Q1 2025 and guess what technology emerges out on top 🤖

CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang spoke to a packed Las Vegas arena to talk about how they plan to drive gaming, robotics, personal computing and self-driving vehicles. Read the key takeaways here. 🚛

Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek has just launched a new LLM with a focus of sharpening artificial general intelligence in order for it to perform intellectual tasks like humans. 🫀

Atom CTO Podcasts

Our top picks from this year’s series of podcasts…

How to write a pitch deck 📽️
Over on our Real World Entrepreneurship sister podcast, Bhairav and Alan add their thoughts to Guy Kawasaki’s 10 slide methodology.

New Atom CTO podcast season coming up 🎙️
From the beginning of February, we have a whole host of new podcast content coming up, including a mini-series on AI and how to implement it in your business. Subscribe to the Atom podcast (link below) if you’d like to be notified every time we publish a new episode.

Got a minute? Respond to our reader survey!

So that we can make sure we’re delivering the right content, we’d love to know more about you, our readers. Fill in to this quick (anonymous) survey to tell us more. 👂

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Editor’s Note

As this is the final newsletter for 2024 I thought I'd muse on some of the things I learned this year, not only from my day job of running Atom CTO but also from my travels, acting as a fractional CTO and mentor. They come in no particular order of importance or significance.

I'm not mentioning AI

Seriously, I'm not. Not because I don't have an opinion on it, I do. However, I feel you'll hear enough people bang on about how great it is, how scary it is and how much hype there is so you don't need me pitching in.

However what I will say, based on the mentoring I've been doing this year, is that if you are a founder, sure learn about AI but don't just cling onto the buzzwords. This space is moving at lightning speed. If you want to talk seriously about the subject then learn the fundamentals and think of AI as a tool, not a solution to everything.

It's been a brutal year for those raising investment

This may not be news for those of you that have been out there trying to raise funds this year but out of the last 15 or so years where I've been working with start-ups and scale-ups, this year has been one of the roughest.

Goalposts have moved, investors have become much more selective and those companies that have won the most funding are those going for Series A and B. Early stage and later funding rounds seem way more difficult to get.

Will this trend continue?

I think it will, it seems to me that even though there seem to be more and more funds opening up, the risk appetite for most investors and funds has decreased. If you disagree then please do let me know….

Our most successful clients have bootstrapped and have followed well-worn mantras

If you have product-market fit, a solid sales pipeline and a great team running the business then the fact that the investment landscape is bad doesn't really matter. Sure your growth may be slowed but it isn't non-existent.

There's been nothing glamorous about their rise, but what has been interesting to see is that the sustainable growth they have achieved has given them the confidence to go out to market and try to win new business. Unlike other businesses I've seen, they've not seen a lack of vast cash reserves as a barrier to profitable growth.

There are still too many disreputable software agencies out there

I can't remember a previous year where we've had to deal with so many disreputable software agencies and vendors and this is for clients both large and small. We've had vendors that have caused their own delays, delivered the wrong thing and then tried to blame the business (i.e. our client) for their shortcomings. We've seen vendors not hand over the keys to the code even though they've been fully paid. We've had vendors that have tried to charge clients for things that we know they should be getting for free.

I'm not going to blame the victim here but as a business owner, more due diligence should be done on software vendors and to that point, our long term legal partner, Rustam Roy and I did a whole webinar on this: how to engage with software vendors. Please watch before you engage.

Scaling is always hard, no matter how many times you've done it before

We had a year of growth here at Atom CTO, both in personnel and projects and even though this is something the senior leadership has been through before, it was still hard - so hard that we decided to scale back and re-strategize.

Why? You make ask….

For many reasons I must say: we weren't ready to scale, we took on too much all at once, we hadn't prepared well enough in the change in roles / skills needed, we didn't have the right people in place….

The killer reason was focus. Scaling when you all have a shared vision is great but when that shared vision is too wide and encompasses too many things then the strategies become diluted and people lose sight of what they need to do to keep the company moving forward.

To solve the issue of scaling, I went back to basics - why did we start the company, who did we want to serve? From that we decided to remove the projects that weren't strategic and let attrition take care of the personnel that didn't want to be a part of our journey and hired those that did. That leaves us with a vision for 2025 that is very clear and for which the strategies will be simple to follow.

Don't do B2G unless you are Elon Musk or Peter Thiel

We’ve worked with a few B2G (business to government) businesses this year - mostly in the UK and it’s hard. Very, very hard.

Unless you are very well connected at a governmental level or you have some serious money behind you, you will find that B2G is a massive slog and you will quickly drain your resources whilst waiting for someone to make a decision and don't forget, it is never in a governmental institution's benefit to say "no" - you will be kept hanging for a while.

Whilst the UK is wallowing in self-pity, the rest of the world is moving ahead

I've done a fair bit of travelling this year - Asia, US, Europe and the one thing that sets apart those countries that are on the move to those that are not is: mindset.

Here in the UK we've had a pretty disastrous government for the past 15 years, our standard of living is the same as in 2010. If you are of middle income in the UK, you're worse off than your French or German counterparts. The new government hasn't exactly set the world alight and if you are a small business here (as is Atom CTO) then you'll be battered early next year with a raft of different tax increases.

Having said all of that though, we are still a large economy but we're thinking like a small one whereas I was in Malaysia which is a much smaller economy than the UK which is thinking like a big one, one that’s investing in its small businesses and young people.

Similarly, having been up and down the East coast of the US this past month you get the sense that even if you hate the incoming president, things are about to change and for the better. I could bang on about how in economic terms the US is doing very well but the issue is that people don't feel like they are doing well and that's all that matters. You may hate Trump, but he's giving people a sense of change.

So what does all this really mean? Well, for Atom CTO, I see new opportunities and you should for your own companies too.

Let the media be the doom-mongers, entrepreneurs and business owners should get on with finding new opportunities.

Higher taxes means that companies will need to become more efficient, workers will need to be more productive. The boom in investment in other countries opens up opportunities for companies that have the means to exploit them.

So what opportunities do I see for Atom CTO? Well, watch this space as we will be making a series of announcements over the coming weeks as we launch a raft of new joint ventures, partnerships and services during the course of 2025.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Not a natural networker? Here’s a useful article with tips for those who don’t like to network about how you can meet new people and make some good connections. 🤹🏾

Set that deadline! Why? Because Parkinson’s Law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. ⏰

Founder of PostHog James Hawkins admits he was wrong about Product Managers, now he can’t do without them, but he has devised a new way for them to work in harmony with engineers. Here’s the playbook. 🐷

Despite AI being the most talked about tech trend over the past 2 years, just 6% of US companies are using AI in their products and services. 🧠

Scared about your job being replaced by AI? Billionaire Mark Cuban has predicted that AI will only have an impact on jobs which require simple yes or no decisions. ⚖

What will AI look like in 2025? From a new AI pecking order to showing ROI, read the predictions for how the AI building blocks will be firmly in their place. 🐓

Don’t let your manager care about something more that you do… the simple tip for managing up. Shared priorities result in more positive dynamics. 🌋

Atom CTO Podcasts

Our top picks from this year’s series of podcasts…

Why projects fail 🐈
While we’re in a reflective mood on the past year, it’s also important to look back at project which might have failed, and most importantly, why.

Fall in love with your problem, not your solution 💡
Tom Green from MVP development agency Verticode busts a few common myths about developing an MVP and how to ensure the best success.

Essential guide to software contracts 👨🏻‍💻
A commonly overlooked aspect of starting a business is the software contract which outlines the expectations between the software developer and the customer. Bhairav talks to legal expert Rustam Roy about the benefits of legal contracts for tech work.

Who are you? Respond to our reader survey! (This link works now!)

So that we can make sure we’re delivering the right content, we’d love to know more about you, our readers. Fill in to this quick (anonymous) survey to tell us more. 👂

Happy New Year from the Atom CTO Team! 🎉

However 2024 was for you, we hope that your 2025 is even more positive, prosperous and innovative.

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Editor’s Note

Scammers seems to be the topic of the month which is never a good thing.

I’m currently out in the US and the number of people telling me about their experience of being duped by unscrupulous scammers has been quite unsettling not only because the scams seem to be pretty elaborate but also because over here, there’s not much recourse (unlike in the UK).

Take this example from a good friend Alicia Butler-Pierre who had her bank account drained days before she left the US on a business trip. Alicia is an intelligent, switched-on person but the scammers got her at the end of the day, when she was in the middle of other things and had a huge amount of information on her which made her think that her bank was really calling her.

I’ve seen more and more sophisticated ruses, the COO of one of Atom’s clients had his voice cloned and a WhatsApp voice note was left for an employee who was switched on enough to realise that the speech patterns weren’t correct. We’ve had our own attempts at scams at Atom where new employees have been targeted on WhatsApp by people posing as me and requesting they buy iTunes vouchers.

Scammers are here to stay, we will have to get used to them but there are a number of good practices we can put in place to mitigate the risk of losing money:

• Be careful what you post on social media: scammers will look out to see if you’ve recently raised funds or if people have joined your company. You don’t always need to broadcast lots of detail and when you do make announcements, tell your employees to be extra vigilant.

• Put robust processes in place for sensitive parts of your business: there was a famous scam recently where a company was scammed out of $25M by AI deepfakes during a Teams meeting. That was an elaborate set-up but still, if the person had called the CFO directly to confirm the transfer, things could have been different.

• Use multi-factor authentication and have good password discipline. Use a password manager and make sure that you use single-sign on where you can.

• Make sure your company has security training. Security training is cheap and effective and you can keep an eye on who in your company is failing / ignoring the tests. If in doubt, talk to your managed services provider, they usually bundle this into their service.

• Monitor the dark web: this doesn’t have to be nefarious, use tools like Have I Been Pwnd to see if your emails have been breached and make sure you change passwords if you find an email has been compromised. For companies there are other tools that can alert you to exactly what data is out there on you.

• A personal favourite of mine is that if you have a business that deals with sensitive data, allow your users to set a security phrase that you can then add to emails that you send out so that they know that your emails are legit.

• Remember that everything can be spoofed, your email, your phone number, your voice and even your face so if you are senior in your organisation alert your team to possible scams, I give my phone number to all new employees so that they know if a request is coming from someone fake. Also reduce the ways in which you will contact people - have policies to say that you’ll only contact or call people through Teams or Slack.

• Trust nothing! This is generally the best way to be in this new age. If you get a phone call from a bank, put the phone down and call them back on a number that is publicly available. Don’t do important things like move money around when you are occupied with other things etc.

It is sad that we have to deal with all of these possible attacks but with tech getting more sophisticated we are going to have to get used to a new normal…

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Sick of all those Teams calls? Now you can send your clone! Microsoft will soon let you clone your voice for conference calls 👯‍♀️

Forget MoSCoW prioritisation, the ‘Must-have’ bucket is always a lie because features are never a must-have, it’s what those features are supposed to make possible that’s a must-have. Read the full article to combat the fixed-scope thinking of MoSCoW. 🚋

Mobile network operator O2 has just launched a chatbot to hassle scammers. The AI Granny mimics an old lady who is keen to chat about cats and knitting in order to waster scammers’ time. 👵🏻

With the National Insurance Contribution changes coming into effect from next year, many companies are starting to rethink how they take on talent. Read our article Why now might be the perfect time to hire a fractional CTO. 👨🏻‍💻

Thinking like a mathematician: David Bessis says that maths is a dialogue between reason and instinct, and that maths taught in schools puts too much emphasis on the logical. 🧮

Atom CTO Podcasts

Best piece of advice you’ve been given
As we approach the end of another year, let’s look back at least year’s recap of podcasts guests sharing the best pieces of advice they have ever received. 🦉

Never work harder than your boss
Listen to the podcast interview with Nadine Lewis about the power of employee feedback and how to make positive changes. 📈

FoodLlama: Being an immigrant founder in the UK
Hear from founder Damilare Ogunleye about building a personalised food platform which learns specific food preferences and shopping behaviour promises. 🦙

Who are you? Respond to our reader survey!

So that we can make sure we’re delivering the right content, we’d love to know more about you, our readers. Fill in to this quick (anonymous) survey to tell us more. 👂

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

What's fractional tech leadership all about?

Think of it like having a senior tech expert in your pocket. You get all the wisdom and guidance of a seasoned CTO, but only pay for what you actually need. It's rather like having a trusted advisor on speed dial. The fractional CTO attends all the important meetings and is on hand to share their experience and advice for effective tech planning and management.

Getting expert help without breaking the bank

Here's the thing about growing businesses, you’ll often find yourself out of your comfort zone. You need someone with serious tech know-how to help you make the right decisions, but you might not be ready for a full-time CTO with all the trimmings. That's where fractional leadership comes into its own.

A fractional CTO can be your guide through everything tech in the business. They'll help you figure out your tech strategy, make sure you're building things the right way, and give your development team someone experienced to bounce ideas off. They can also handle those tricky vendor negotiations and keep you on the right side of cybersecurity regulations - all without the commitment of a full-time hire.

The money side of things

With the new NIC changes coming up, hiring is set to become more expensive. Fractional talent offers a different approach. You're not dealing with employer's NI or pension contributions, and you can flex the arrangement up or down as your business needs change. Plus, you get access to the kind of expertise that usually comes with a hefty salary package, but without the long-term commitment.

When should you consider a fractional CTO?

Maybe you're about to embark on a big digital transformation project, or you're scaling up your tech operations. Perhaps you're getting ready for a funding round and need to make sure your tech strategy is solid. These are all perfect moments to bring in a fractional CTO.

A fractional CTO should make your existing tech team stronger, not replace them. Your current developers and tech staff know your systems inside out, and that's incredibly valuable. Think of a fractional CTO as adding another dimension - they bring strategic oversight and mentorship that helps the whole team.

How to measure success

You'll know your fractional CTO is earning their keep when you see positive changes happening. Your team might be working more efficiently, or those technical headaches you've been dealing with start to disappear. You should notice better practices being put in place, and most importantly, you should be able to see real returns on your tech investments.

Bring prepared for NIC: hiring differently 

As we head towards the 2025 NIC changes, it's worth thinking creatively about how you grow your tech capabilities. Fractional leadership isn't about replacing your current team - it's about adding expertise that helps everyone perform better.

Whether you're planning to dial up your digital presence, scale your operations, or just need someone experienced in your corner, a fractional CTO could be exactly what you need to navigate the road ahead. 

For a chat about how your business can benefit from a fractional CTO, get in touch: drop us an email at hello@atomcto.com or check out our website.

Editor’s Note

I’ve been in Asia this past week talking to business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs and ecosystem partners and guess what is on top of people’s minds….AI!

It can be no surprise that most companies in Asia are looking to embrace AI in some form (who isn’t) but what has caught my eye is the number of AI solutions that are homegrown here in Asia and that are tackling some extremely complex issues.

Perhaps it was just me, but the companies I saw were not focused on building a solution on top of a LLM wrapper, they were looking to build models from scratch, ones that would serve specific needs. One presentation I saw even juxtaposed ChatGPT with their own model to show how poor that LLM was at finding solutions for the specific use case this company was trying to solve.

What does this tell us and why should we care? Well, the pace of innovation here in Asia is rapid, solutions are popping up even faster than I’ve seen in Europe and the most important thing is that they are gaining adoption fast.

We always talk about how Asia is ahead when it comes to tech but what we don’t always recognise is that different parts of Asia move at different speeds so though Malaysia is perhaps ahead of the likes of Cambodia, they are years behind the likes of Taiwan and this should make all of us in Europe sit up an think.

The Malaysian government is putting a lot of money into start-ups, they are announcing a 1B MYR fund for start-ups and the government already provides grants of $35k to start-ups as long as they meet some fairly basic criteria and once you scale you can receive up to $130k in additional grant funding.

This means that more ideas will be spawned and importantly, they will have money to get themselves started unlike in Europe where we are seeing less and less angel investment and the government (at least in the UK) doing very little to support early stage businesses.

One positive note for UK businesses is that we were very well received on our trade mission. Companies in Asia are open to collaboration and they want businesses, skills and knowledge to come over as well as wanting access to our markets.

At Atom CTO, we’ll be looking to see how we can help bridge businesses from Asia to Europe and vice versa….watch this space.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Monzo has recently announced a share sale but it was limited to current staff. 50 former employees have put a petition to the board to be included and get a piece of the pie 🥧

If you think that LLMs are built on the ability to reason - think again! Apple engineers have blown a hole in this assumption, saying instead that AI reasoning can actually be quite flimsy. 🤖

The email provider landscape was very different before Gmail came along in 2004, read more about how it has changed the way we do emails. 📧

The Verge have also create a 2004-style homepage of articles about tech trends of the time, take a look if you’re looking for some nostalgia! 🕶️

The role of CTO is to understand how to grow a business, build the budget to spend on people that will build the technologies that will grow the business. Read more about the best financial metrics for a CTO. 🦉

Atom CTO Podcasts

Fall in love with your problem, not your solution 💡
Tom Green from MVP development agency Verticode busts a few common myths about developing an MVP and how to ensure the best success.

Understanding product management and idea validation 🧠
Experienced product consultant Diana Matei chats with Bhairav about how to determine whether a product idea is worth pursuing and how best to validate it.

⭐️ Essential guide to software contracts 👨🏻‍💻
A commonly overlooked aspect of starting a business is the software contract which outlines the expectations between the software developer and the customer. Bhairav talks to legal expert Rustam Roy about the benefits of legal contracts for tech work.

Tech conferences past and future

We’ve been busy! At the beginning of October we were in London at Sifted Summit and recently we got back from the APC Tech Trade Mission in Kuala Lumpur. Next up is Business Show at Olympia, London. If you’ll be there, come and find us!

• The Business Show - stand B1970 (November 13-14, London)

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Editor’s Note

For some time now I’ve been puzzling over why people seem to treat tech and tech projects differently from other high value activities. For example, if you’re hiring a contractor to do some works on your house, and I mean major works, you’re unlikely to hand them over the cash and let them have at it.

You’d sit down with them, go through the plans, make suggestions and then look to put in place some sort of contract that protects you in some way if things go wrong.

With tech, many business owners seem to treat the process more like handing over your car to get a servicing - you’re giving an expensive, prized possession over to an “expert” and are not really thinking about a contract, you’re just assuming they know what they are doing and when they tell you that you need to spend more, you tend to pay them - all with no contract in place.

Tech done well does cost money, it does take time and yes, more often not it costs more and takes longer than you initially thought and so any sensible business owner should cover their risk by putting a sensible contract in place.

But people don’t do that.

Working with start-ups it is not unusual to see them giving work to a random developer in a distant country that they’ve probably only ever seen face to face over the web once before the camera gets turned off permanently. To be honest it doesn’t have to be a distant country, these things happen in good old Blighty too, but the important thing is that someone hands over money to someone else with no contract in place. We may not be talking large sums but they are significant sums - all the money a business has in some cases - so why on earth are these companies not protecting themselves?

I have no clue.

To me this is a mystery and so what we can do at Atom CTO is to help people understand why a contract should be in place and its not just about de-risking things if something goes wrong, it is also about protecting IP, showing investors that you have good rigour within your business etc. etc.

To that end, I recorded a podcast with our own legal representative, Rustam Roy, to talk through the importance of software contracts and what you need to think about in order to protect yourself. It is linked below and well worth a listen.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

You’re probably already familiar with the project time-cost-quality triangle, but in reality it’s not as simple as it seems. Read more here about tradeoffs and limits of control. ⚠️

Have you ever felt paralysed by a decision, unable to decide on a way forward? You might benefit from second order thinking which suggests a thorough framework to turn you into a super thinker. 🦹🏾

Sometimes, having the vision is the easy bit. Next comes product development which can be mighty difficult. Read the latest article from Bhairav on the 6 Keys to Product Development. 🗝️

If you have a business idea, how do you differentiate it? Here’s a practical guide about how to identify the unique benefits of your product. ⭐️

Leadership is a skill which like any craft, requires persistence and learning. Here’s a two parter about the principles of good leadership. Part one - Part two. 🎺

So, what exactly does a CTO do? Find out what 26 C-Level experts think about the role of the modern CTO ⛰️

Atom CTO Podcasts

Understanding product management and idea validation 🧠
Experienced product consultant Diana Matei chats with Bhairav about how to determine whether a product idea is worth pursuing and how best to validate it.

⭐️ Essential guide to software contracts 👨🏻‍💻
A commonly overlooked aspect of starting a business is the software contract which outlines the expectations between the software developer and the customer. Bhairav talks to legal expert Rustam Roy about the benefits of legal contracts for tech work.

New AI-powered podcast bot

We’ve recorded hundreds of hours of podcast recordings. But we realise that not many of us have time to listen to the whole back-catalogue. 🤖

You might notice in the bottom corner of our website that we’ve added a clever AI bot which taps into all the startup and entrepreneurial expertise from every podcast episode. Simply ask it your burning startup questions and you’ll receive a concise and insightful answer based on every podcast expert interview over the past few years.

Tech conferences coming up - see you there!

The next few months for Atom CTO are going to be super busy! If you also happen to be attending any of the following conferences, please drop by our stand and say hi 👋

• Sifted - stand B105 (October 2-3, London)

• The Business Show - stand B1970 (November 13-14, London)

• APAC Tech Trade Mission (14-18 October, Kuala Lumpur)

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Imagine you have an idea for a product or service that is going to solve a major challenge that consumers, businesses or governments are facing.

You have a clear vision of what it is going to do, how it will solve the problem and how people are going to use it.

Now you need to build it.

You email a few software development companies, pitch your idea and then you’re off….your vision gets built, you launch, customers flock to it and you’re on your way to running a thriving and successful business!

Is it that easy though?  It should be….if your idea is good enough and you’ve articulated it well enough so that the company developing it knows exactly what you want.

The Reality

Why isn’t it so easy?

Well that’s because most entrepreneurs we meet aren’t able to articulate what they want in a language that developers can understand.  In fact, they’re often not able to articulate the idea in the exact same way twice.

What do I mean by that?  Well, I’ve met with many, many entrepreneurs and the one consistent thing I can point out is that each conversation I have with them about their product is different.

The idea they have grows and evolves over time and they very rarely spend time documenting clearly what they want initially, which means the ideas floating in their head at any moment in time are the most current but there’s no backdrop, no context to how they’ve come to the place they are at now.  When I talk with them, I’m expected to know all of the different iterations that have been running through their head.

The 6 Keys of Product Development

What do I do to solve this?  Well, I put them through our product development methodology that allows them to document where they are at now, what they are thinking about and we use that as the baseline for iterating through ideas and solutions.

Now, I will fully admit that the title of “6 Keys” is a bit of clickbait, however it is based on something I came up with years ago whilst working as the CTO for an e-commerce business in Norway that was very fast paced and had a great founder that was constantly full of ideas.

This methodology is based on the Zachman Framework I have just adapted over the past 15 years to fit start-ups and the entrepreneurial mindset.  It is a thought process that we at Atom CTO use to define the product that our start-up founders and business owners want to build and allows us to put things into simple terms that all developers, team leads, business analysts, software testers can understand.

The methodology can be broken down into 6 key elements that you need to define in order to provide a holistic view of the product or service.  Most importantly, this methodology is not just focused on product but on your business as a whole.

As I keep on saying: “An app is not a business”

The 6 key elements:

• Who?

• What?

• How?

• When?

• Where?

• Why?

  

Who?

Everything starts with “Who”: Who are your core customers, who will support your business, who will supply your business, who will engage with your business?

This is the first stage of product development and through it, what we need to understand is who are all the key stakeholders that will play a part in your business. This is not just about the customers but also about your employees, your suppliers, your partners and even to some extent your competitors.

The “who” also needs to be fairly specific. When you’re thinking about your customer, think about the different roles they may have. If it is a consumer are they all regular purchasers or will you have one offs or seasonal purchasers? If you are targeting a business, what different roles within the business are you targeting? Is there a difference in the way senior management will interact with your business as opposed to a factory worker?

When it comes to vendors and partners - what kind are they, what will they supply, how do you need to interact with them. For employees, how many do you have, what roles do they play, are they multi-tasking or do you have different people for different roles?

What?

Once you have defined who is interacting with your business and your products and services, you need to think about what the end goals and objectives for each of them are.

If you’re targeting a business, the goals for a worker on a factory floor may be different from the senior manager. The worker on the factory floor may be interacting with all aspects of your product or may need to be segregated from some areas whereas the senior manager may need to see data across all factories in all regions.

Similarly your employees, vendors and partners all need to have certain insights into your business and data in order to do their jobs well. Are you providing stock information to your vendors on a regular basis so they can replenish goods without you having to order them?  Do your customer service employees need to know about the purchases your customers make so that they know what level of service to provide - conversely do they need to know about people who raise many complaints?

The “what” is not just about what buttons people need to press to get to their end goal, it's about the data, the information they need in order to achieve their end goals in the most efficient manner possible.

How?

So now you know who is interacting with your business and what their objectives are, you now need to define how they’re going to do what they need to do.

This is all about putting down the business processes onto paper. How do different business units within your company act together with your customers, partners, vendors and other business units?

How does a customer actually buy from you? How do they get support? How does a vendor get the information they need to make the right deliveries to you?

You are designing the “value chains” within the business.  These are the sets of actions that people will perform that will bring value to them and your business.

But don’t forget to plan for failure. Not everything goes right 100% of the time. When you define your process flows, you need to also define what happens if certain parts of the flow aren’t met.

What happens if a customer doesn’t register successfully? What happens if a shopping cart is left abandoned, what happens if a customer says they haven’t received their goods?  What happens if the internet goes down on a factory floor.

You can’t cover all scenarios but you can plan for those that will cause your business to lose money or will cause dissatisfaction within your client or partner base.

When?

Not all actions will be performed by all of your stakeholders at the same time.  Based on the different processes / value chains you’ve created, identify when different stakeholders will be performing those actions.

This feeds a lot into design. If there are important tasks that are not performed frequently i.e. downloading an invoice, then these may need to be signposted clearly so customers don’t get frustrated when trying to perform the action.

Conversely, you may want to make it harder for customers to do things that you don’t want them to do, because they cause additional workload for you or hurt your bottom line.

Knowing when stakeholders will do things also helps you plan your resources better, you’ll know when to shift staff around or have more people working on certain tasks.

Where?

This is an often overlooked but extremely important question.  “Where” dictates many things - compliance and regulatory, language, connectivity and a lot of the non-functional aspects of the business that people tend to overlook at the early stages.

Your company may be selling goods in one country and delivering to another, so what do you need to know about the local laws governing that in both places?

Even if we don’t look at compliance, the “where” gives us practical insights - if your customers are going to be accessing your product on a construction site in the middle of nowhere, then you’d better be thinking about how your product will work with little or no internet.

The “where” helps you understand better the context in which your product will be used and what infrastructure and oversight you will need to put in place to support it.

Why?

This is the most important question.

When there are so many products and services to choose from, why should anyone use yours?

Do you have the best selection of products, are you the cheapest, do you have the best product support, do you have the only solution that is compliant and works in a certain jurisdiction?

The why is what shapes everything else within your business. If it is because you are the most efficient then you need to make sure that you design the “how” to be the most efficient. The “why” is the reason your business thrives or dies and when you have decided on the why, you need to go back through everything else you have defined and make sure that the “why” is ingrained into every step.

Job Done…

The 6 keys are not small, it is not a simple exercise to go through but if you want to build a product that will succeed in the long term, you need to go through every single step and make sure you fully outline the requirements for each.  At the end of it you will have a clear picture of your business that developers, customers and investors will all understand.

If you'd like to learn more, visit our website or listen to a LinkedIn live webinar where we describe the challenges non-technical founders face when managing projects and also provide some advice on what you can do to prevent those challenges from arising.

If you are currently facing a tech challenge or just want to have a chat, you can reach out to me via LinkedIn, via our Atom CTO page or just contact us.

Editor’s Note

We’re in the rundown to the UK elections, the French elections will be underway soon and we’ve just had the first Presidential debate in the US. We are awash with politics at the moment.

Last week, I was asked by my podcast co-host Alan Clarke about what I thought that we could learn about business from politicians and I have to be honest, I thought he was bonkers.

However as you look at what is going on right now in the world of politics and you take a little time to sit back and have a think, you’ll see that there are a lot of parallels between business and politics and from the shenanigans that is going on right now, you can easily what you shouldn’t be doing when running a business.

Political parties need money (investment), they need followers and evangelists (community) and at the very least they need to be able to communicate a clear vision of how they’ll govern the country and what they’ll do (strategy + execution plan).

I’m not saying we’re getting any of that from the current lot but just from that you’ll see the parallels but what is more interesting to me at this moment in time is that if you’re a business owner, you can see exactly how parties are failing.

You can see the hubris in certain politicians, you can see people just faking it, you see the egos, you see the lack of vision, direction, clarity and most of all you see the inability of leaders to actually put across their proposition in a manner that convinces us that they know what they are doing. They are not inspiring us to follow them.

All of the parties and personnel that are failing now are making mistakes that business owners make all of the time and you just have to look in front of you now to take in a great lesson for how not to run a business.

Who knew that politicians could actually teach you a thing or two about business?

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Do you need a technical co-founder? The competencies list expected of a technical co-founder is lengthy, but getting good talent on board in return for equity is harder than you think. In this LinkedIn article, Bhairav considers the alternatives. 🦆

Learn how European venture capital is helping to fuel sustainability and societal change through the analysis of investment data in this Tech Nation report. 🇪🇺

OpenAI has been accused of being too reckless with its technology. In response, they have released an interesting document explaining the logic behind their AI model. 🖖

Tech projects can fail for many reasons, when you know the pitfalls, it’s easier to avoid them and have more successful projects. 🐠

In this revamped LinkedIn article Atom CTO’s Bhairav explains the role of a CTO and how to hire one including an appreciation of the operational, strategic and senior-level plates they have to spin. 🤓

Want to incorporate LLM but don’t know where to start? Learn from experienced AI engineers who have shared a practical guide about how to build successful LLM products. 🤖

Atom CTO Podcasts

If you like the Atom CTO podcast, you’ll also enjoy its sister podcast, Real World Entrepreneurship which features Bhairav and strategy and marketing specialist Alan Clark and their musings on entrepreneurship.

Fake it ‘til you make it 💅🏻
Do you need a perfect MVP before launch? In this episode, Bhairav and Alan talk about how sometimes smoke and mirrors are fine if you have something that customers will buy.

Are you busy being busy? 🐝
Are some entrepreneurs more focused on winning awards and gaining recognition than actually building their businesses? Hear about the myth of the 24/7 hustle and why it’s important to focus on quality over quantity.

What start-ups can learn from politics 💬
With the UK elections imminent, many of us have politics on the brain. Bhairav and Alan can’t help but notice the similarities between politicians and start-up founders.

Why projects fail 💩
CPOP - no it’s not some Korean pop band, it’s an acronym of principles to help you run a thorough project and be less likely to fail. Listen to find out more.

Turing Fest Mixer - Tuesday 9th July

We’re sponsoring the International Summer Mixer by Foras events in Edinburgh on 9th July. There’s still time to get your ticket here.

Do you have a tech or project management challenge?

We’re opening our (virtual) doors to two online clinics, just book your place and drop in and chat with our experts. Find out more about the Atom Tech Clinic, and Atom Project Delivery Clinic. 🩺

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

The conversation usually centres around them either having built some tech and wanting someone to lead the charge going forwards or them not having built any tech and wanting a co-founder that can do the build.

The key phrase I always hear, no matter what the context is: “For equity”

Now, my cynical old self usually translates that phrase to “For free” but I’m grey haired enough to recognise that my initial reaction shouldn’t be the final one.

The tech co-founder Griffin

During these conversations I always ask: “What do you want this person to do?” because in my mind bringing onboard a co-founder (regardless of whether they are technical or not) is a big deal.  You are essentially giving away a portion of your business, which at the early stages is a significant thing.

The laundry list of tasks expected of a technical co-founder generally goes like this:

• Be able to code

• Be able to build, grow and lead a tech team

• Be able to set the tech strategy and roadmap

• Be able to help raise funds by being the face of tech to investors

• Be able to go out to events and launch and promote the business

• Fully believe in the mission of the business and be 100% on board with the strategy / trajectory already set

Any one of these tasks is a lot of work in an early stage business, doing all of these together is fairly heroic and what is more heroic is doing this all for equity - which until you’ve made some money and look like a viable, sellable business means that person is essentially doing this for free.

So what does this mean for the tech co-founder?  To me, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of work for someone else’s vision. If you had that kind of talent as a tech co-founder, wouldn’t you just work on  your own vision?

And this is where we get to the crux of the matter….for any one person to do all of those tasks very well is amazing, I’d invest in you now.  The reality is that most people can do one or two of those things very well and are probably OK at the others.  However, you’d have to do those things well and believe in the vision of the original founder(s) and follow their lead.  This is a tough pill to swallow and it becomes tougher with the fact that there’s no money on the table.

Less myth, more reality

Generally the conversation then flows into how hard it is to find a technical co-founder and this is where I try to point out that what they are searching for is a Tech Griffin (the term unicorn is overused) and that mythical beasts are just that. Mythical.

To me, such founders are driven by the fact that they have no money to offer the tech expert  and that’s fair enough.  Times are hard and getting early stage investment has never been easy.  But if you break down the tasks and assign them to different people, you may actually find people that are willing to back you for a small portion of the business if you are demanding less of them.

There are students or young graduates out there that would love to work in an early stage start-up even if it is to gain experience, there are also companies out there that will do development for sweat equity or some sort of match funding.  You can lean on advisors to help you with the investor pitching and when it comes to events, you are always the best person to be out front promoting your business.

How much tech do you really need?

But Bhairav, you say, you run a business that sells fractional CTO services and has recently launched a tech co-founder service along with Siya.  Aren’t you going to be biased against this question of hiring technical co-founders?

Well, it may sound strange but many times when non-technical start-up founders come to me for advice the first thing I ask them is: do you really need to build tech?

Of course if you have a deep tech business or you are in a sector that is reliant on digitizing manual processes then yes, you will need tech. But the world of low code / no code has moved on a lot these past few years. There are companies that can get you off the ground quickly to validate your idea.

If you are a more mature business that has already got some tech and needs someone to lead it then why not give the work to a fractional CTO who won’t take your shares.  Shares are finite, you can only give so many away so hold on to them until you really need to give them up.

Often you can start your business with tools that exist out there already.  There are a plethora of vendors that allow you to create commercial applications that will take payments for very little cost. I’ve even known entrepreneurs that have run 6 figure businesses using WhatsApp! The key is to take it as far as you can  yourself, build tech when you need to scale the idea and then continue to build strategically i.e. make sure you are building in order to grow, retain customers, increase your offering, reduce your costs etc.

Take the tech out of tech co-founder

You will need a CTO or a technical person on your team at some point.  Whether they are a co-founder or not shouldn’t depend on whether they are technical or not.  First and foremost, whoever you bring on as a co-founder should share your vision and believe in your cause.  They should then bring something special  to the table if you are going to offer them a significant share of your business.

If you are like one founder who I know of  who offered 0.5% to their tech co-founder in return for them coding the entire platform, then don’t bother looking for anyone technical, no one will take you seriously.  If you are asking the person to do serious work, they will want serious compensation.

However, think hard about whether you will treat this person coming on board as your equal or as your employee.  If it’s the latter then you are not looking for a co-founder, you are looking for someone to provide you services and there are plenty of people out there that can do that.

At the end of the day, when you are looking for someone to come on board and run your tech, you need to be realistic about all that they can achieve. Building technology is not a small task, neither is raising funds or exhibiting at events. If you look at all of the things you truly need in order for the tech side of your business to be successful, you will be best served by breaking down those tasks and finding the right people at the right time to fulfil them.

About Atom CTO

If you'd like to learn more about me or Atom CTO then please visit our website. We have our own tech co-founder offering which we run with our partners Siya Tech Ventures, which you can contact us about here.

If you are currently facing a tech challenge or just want to have a chat then just contact us or enrol in one of our free tech clinics:

• Atom Tech Clinic

• Project Delivery Clinic

This article distils the key points from our conversation, offering practical advice and strategies for those navigating the path to becoming a CTO.

The Changing Role of the CTO

The role of the CTO has evolved significantly over the years. Traditionally seen as a purely technical position, today's CTOs are strategic leaders who align technology with business goals. They are deeply involved in decision-making processes, bridging the gap between technical teams and business operations. As we discuss, understanding this evolution is crucial for anyone aspiring to become a CTO or looking to hire one.

Key Skills and Experience Needed to Become a CTO

• Technical Proficiency and Beyond: While technical expertise is essential, aspiring CTOs must also develop skills in project management, business strategy, and people management. Mark emphasizes the need to understand broader business concepts, such as finance and marketing, to effectively bridge the gap between technology and business needs.

• Consulting as a Learning Path: Consulting can be a valuable stepping stone for aspiring CTOs. It offers exposure to various industries and business functions, helping develop a comprehensive understanding of how different parts of a business operate and how technology can support them.

• Mentorship and Networking: Building relationships with mentors and leveraging professional networks are crucial for guidance and new opportunities. Mark benefited from mentors who were recruiters, executives, and community members from his MIT fraternity, highlighting the value of a strong support network.

Some of the Challenges CTO’s Face

• Cultural Fit and Recruitment: One of Mark's early mistakes was hiring a technically proficient developer who was not a good cultural fit for a start-up environment. Understanding the cultural and team dynamics is crucial when hiring to ensure long-term success and employee satisfaction.

• Politics and People Management: Navigating organizational politics and managing teams effectively are significant challenges. Mark shared his experience of hiring a developer from a big bank who struggled with the startup's self-organizing team culture, underscoring the importance of assessing both technical and cultural fit.

Strategic Thinking and Adaptability

As CTOs climb the ranks, their role shifts from being operational to strategic. This transition involves managing day-to-day technical tasks and thinking several steps ahead, understanding market dynamics, and making decisions that align with long-term business goals. Mark's background in competitive chess helped him develop this strategic mindset, demonstrating the value of strategic thinking in the CTO role.

The Future of the CTO Role

The CTO role is continually evolving. Some companies are adopting the title of Chief Technology and Product Officer (CTPO) to reflect the integrated responsibilities of overseeing both technology and product development. This trend is particularly relevant in highly technical fields like cybersecurity, where deep technical expertise is essential for product innovation.

Advice for Aspiring CTOs

• Create a Career Plan: Just as businesses have project plans, aspiring CTOs should develop a career plan that outlines their goals and the steps needed to achieve them. This plan should be flexible, allowing for adjustments as they gain experience and insights.

• Continuous Learning: Staying current with technological trends and business practices is essential. Engaging in peer learning groups, reading industry blogs, and participating in professional communities can help CTOs keep their knowledge up-to-date.

• Holistic Understanding: While deep technical knowledge is vital, having a holistic understanding of the business and its various functions will make a CTO more effective in their role. This includes having a basic grasp of finance, sales, and marketing to better align technology with business objectives.

Finding and Hiring the Right CTO

For business owners looking to hire a CTO, understanding the specific needs of your business is crucial. The role of a CTO can vary widely depending on the company's size and industry. Here are some key considerations:

• Assess Your Needs: Determine whether you need a hands-on technical expert or a strategic leader. Smaller companies might require a CTO who can code and manage a small team, while larger organizations need someone to oversee vast teams and complex projects.

• Look for a Cultural Fit: Ensure that the candidate aligns with your company's culture. A good cultural fit can significantly impact team cohesion and productivity.

• Use a Trusted Network: If you lack the technical expertise to assess candidates, rely on your network. Seek help from trusted recruiters, industry peers, or technical advisors to find the right fit.

The Dark Sides of Being a CTO

The CTO role comes with its challenges, including politics, burnout, and isolation. Navigating these issues requires resilience and a proactive approach:

• Managing Politics: Organizational politics can be exhausting. Developing strong people skills and building alliances within the company can help mitigate political challenges.

• Avoiding Burnout: Long hours and high pressure can lead to burnout. It's essential to find a balance between work and personal life, delegate effectively, and take breaks to recharge.

• Combatting Isolation: CTOs can often feel isolated, especially when they are the sole technical voice in the executive team. Engaging with peer groups and maintaining a robust professional network can provide much-needed support and perspective.

Conclusion

The journey to becoming a CTO is challenging but immensely rewarding. Whether you're an aspiring CTO or a business owner looking to hire one, understanding the evolving nature of the role, the skills required, and the challenges faced can significantly enhance your approach and success. As Bhairav and Mark's discussion highlights, continuous learning, strategic thinking, and strong networking are crucial components for anyone looking to thrive in this pivotal role.

However, months (or even years) down the line, you find yourself staring at an unfinished product, a dwindling bank account, and a growing sense of frustration. Your once-promising tech project has become a source of endless delays, budget overruns, and missed opportunities.

If this scenario sounds all too familiar, you're not alone. At Atom CTO we have seen projects fail not only in the start-up space but even when there are millions of dollars budgeted and the projects are being run by blue-chip consulting companies

But why is this the case, and more importantly, what can you do to avoid falling into the same trap?

To diagnose the issues, we’ve come up with a funky acronym - CPOP: communication, people, oversight, and planning and in this article we’re going to deep dive into each of these areas and explore how they can make or break your tech project.

Communication Breakdowns

Clear and consistent communication is the foundation of any successful project, yet it's often the first thing to fall by the wayside when things get hectic. 

You need clear and consistent communication at the start of a project. We’ve had clients come to us stating that they are confused because they’ve gone out to tender to a range of different development companies but each has come back with wildly different estimates.

When we dig deeper, we find out that the client hasn’t created a single specification that can be shared across multiple vendors - they don’t want to spend the time planning - instead, they say different things to different vendors and magically expect them all to be estimating the same project.

If you cannot communicate consistently and effectively to your potential tech partners then you’re never going to stay on track but this works both ways. You need to demand effective communication from the vendors that work for you and for all of the software developers / agencies reading this post - don’t hide bad news!  Business owners can’t plan properly if you are constantly going to say that something is going to be delivered but is not - you will never get into hot water if you are open with your clients, if you start hiding things then you deserve the wrath that will fall upon you.

For business owners and founders, when you’re talking to a prospective tech vendor, ensure that their methodology involves regular meetings to prioritize work and check on progress. Don’t just sign the contract and check back in 3 months, if you do that, you’re bound to be delivered something that you don’t want / need.

Don’t forget, your business does not remain static whilst development takes place. As you talk to potential customers you will find that features you thought were relevant and required from day 1, may not be and if you don’t have consistent communication with your tech team, you have no way of changing priorities.

To avoid communication breakdowns, establish clear channels of communication from the outset. Spend the money on creating comprehensive project briefs, set up regular check-ins with your team, and ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding objectives, timelines, and deliverables. Don't be afraid to put things in writing – a well-documented project plan can save you countless headaches down the road.

The People Problem

Even the most well-planned project can be derailed by people-related issues. Egos, mismatched skill sets, and a lack of accountability can all conspire to throw your tech project off course. 

To our mind people are the single greatest reason why projects fail - vendors can’t admit that they are unable to deliver and business owners are too stubborn to listen to good advice.  One business that approached us had spent £6 million in 6 years on developing a product that was never delivered.  

Why? It was because the CTO in charge of the project wanted to build perfection and the CEO of the company didn’t have the presence of mind to challenge him or to seek advice as to what to do.

Don’t be afraid to question yourself, your team, especially if they are not delivering but the true way to mitigate this issue is to assemble a team that is not only technically skilled but also aligned with your company's values and goals. This may mean looking beyond impressive resumes and focusing on individuals who are collaborative, adaptable, and willing to check their egos at the door. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities, setting measurable objectives, and fostering a culture of transparency and accountability can go a long way in keeping your team on track.

Oversight Oversights

When you're pouring your heart and soul (not to mention your hard-earned cash) into a tech project, it's tempting to take a hands-off approach and trust that your team has everything under control. However, this can be a recipe for disaster. Just as you wouldn't let your child grade their own homework, you shouldn't allow your tech team to operate without proper oversight.

 This doesn't mean micromanaging every aspect of the project, but rather implementing a system of checks and balances to ensure that everything is progressing as planned. We recommend bringing in an external party to review the work at regular intervals and provide objective feedback. This could be a trusted advisor, a mentor, or even a third-party consultancy that specializes in tech project management.

Planning Pitfalls

Finally, we come to the fourth and final factor in the CPOP framework: planning (or lack thereof). Many tech projects fail because they try to do too much too soon, cramming in every conceivable feature and functionality without considering the user experience or the business impact. Others fail to plan for the inevitable changes and pivots that come with running a business in a dynamic market.

To avoid planning pitfalls, use a common sense approach to planning. At the early stage of a business drop the agile, SCRM labeling, forget the DORA metrics.  The only thing you should be planning and measuring for is whether your tech team is delivering a functioning system that is iteratively getting better and is something you can put out to market to generate revenue.

This means prioritizing features based on user feedback and business value, rather than trying to build the perfect product right out of the gate. It also means building in flexibility and contingency plans to accommodate shifts in market demand, technological advancements, or other unforeseen circumstances.

Avoiding the CPOP Trap

So, how can you steer clear of the dreaded CPOP trap and set your tech project up for success? Here are a few key recommendations:

1. Clearly communicate the "why" behind the project to ensure everyone is aligned on the end goal.

2. Establish measurable KPIs to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

3. Embrace change and plan for pivots, rather than rigidly adhering to a fixed plan.

4. Foster a collaborative, ego-free environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute their best work.

5. Regularly check in with your team and ask tough questions to surface potential issues early on.

6. Don't hesitate to bring in outside expertise to provide guidance and oversight – it may seem like an added expense, but it can save you money (and heartache) in the long run.

7. Always have a Plan B (and C, and D) in your back pocket, so you can quickly adapt when things don't go according to plan.

By following these guidelines and being mindful of the CPOP factors, you can dramatically improve your chances of tech project success. Remember, building a successful app or platform is not a linear process – there will be ups and downs, triumphs and setbacks along the way. The key is to stay focused on your ultimate goal, surround yourself with a talented and dedicated team, and be willing to learn from your mistakes.

In the wise words of our esteemed leader, the MD of Atom CTO, "Projects will fail. You are not always going to be able to get what you want on time, and you may not always get what you want full stop. But if you plan well, hire people that listen rather than talk and understand and mitigate your risks, you can minimize the damage that a project overrun can bring and you will turn your tech project vision into a reality – and who knows, maybe even become the next big thing.

Editor’s Note

We have a big announcement! We are partnering with Siya Tech Ventures to provide a “Tech Co-Founder” service to entrepreneurs and start-up founders.

What does this mean you say? Well, we will be combining the decades of experience we have in developing tech strategies and designing complex systems with the decade of experience that Siya Tech has in building and delivering complex systems.

For the founder / entrepreneur, we will be able to guide you through the process of building your app or digital product and we will work alongside a company we trust and knows has a track record of delivering great software and most importantly has a history of successful exits under it’s belt.

So the question you are asking yourself now is whether this is all clickbait….

….is the title of this newsletter leading you to a promo where I tell you about how wonderful we all are and why you should work with us?

Yes and no.

Of course we all love a bit of clickbait but in reality this partnership does not mean that we will work with every entrepreneur that knocks on our virtual door.

I have always said that a tech partnership has to be a two way street, if the tech partner does not understand the business, what the problem it is the business is trying to solve and what the USP is, then you as a founder shouldn’t be working with them. Similarly if you are a tech company, you shouldn’t be taking on every project that comes your way, you should ask whether you believe in the product, whether you believe the founder will ultimately be successful because there is nothing worse, in our world, than creating great tech for a bad business.

Choosing a tech partner is like choosing a co-founder. The tech partner is the company you are going to be spending the most money on and probably is the company you’ll know the least about. You have to do your due diligence and more than that, you have to chat with the team you’re about to pay a significant amount of money to in order to make sure that they actually believe in what you are building. They don’t have to be as enthusiastic as you, but they do need to at least care that you care.

Too many times we’ve seen companies come our way that have worked with a software development house that took their money and gave them something that wasn’t what the company asked for. Why is this? Because the development house wasn’t engaged, they just wanted to put something in your hands to justify their pay.

Take the choice of tech partner seriously, don’t go to the first person you find, don’t go to the cheapest option. Go to the partner that actually “gets” what you do and don’t be surprised if a good development house rejects you because they’ve understood it but don’t believe in it…it doesn’t mean they are right, it just means they’ve listened.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Will AI be taking EVERY job? Read what McKinsey has to say on the future of AI as it delves in to different AI terminology and what it all means. 🤖

In his publicly available book The Nature of Code, Daniel Shiffman, takes a look at phenomena that naturally occur in the physical world and figures out how to write code to simulate them. 🦅

If you’re still confused about how LLMs (Large Language Models) work, allow this article to explain it, without the complicated maths. 🧮

Meetings are out and asynchronous working is in: The makers of Basecamp have shared their principles on how to best communicate in a start-up. ⏰

The job of the software engineer is not to produce code, it’s to solve problems. Embedded in Google’s software engineering culture is the use of Design Docs for defining the design of a software system. 📖

Forfeiting a work-life balance for that San Francisco energy - if you’re a founder who’s raised $500k+, you can live in one of London’s founder houses too. 🚀

Let’s team up instead of managing up: Managing up enforces hierarchy hence the introduction of a new, egalitarian and more collaborative way of working called Teaming Up. 👪

Are behavioural interviews a waste of time? Don’t ditch the behavioural questions in your interview just yet. This article shows you how to make the most out of them. 🎤

Is your CTO a walking red flag? The gaps among different CTOs beg the question: are CTOs really valuable? 💰

Big updates were announced at Google’s I/O event. Anticipate new features on Google Music, Photos, Gemini and more! 🌐

You can’t always get what you want. The Disappointment Frontier explores the gap between your team’s desires vs what reality offers. The bigger the gap, the bigger the disappointment. The good news? You can always bridge it. 🌉

Atom CTO Podcasts

Crafting Effective Surveys: Asking the right questions 🙋🏽‍♂️
Bhairav talks to Nadine Lewis, from DMSA, a data analytics and research company about the power of employee feedback and how to craft an effective survey.

The Power of Self-Awareness: Unlocking Your Potential as a Business Owner 🙆

Self-awareness is an underrated trait for founders. Beyond knowing where your strengths lie, being self-aware can improve your decision-making, make you a better leader and increase productivity.

Podcast Series: Understanding why tech projects fail 🤷🏾‍♀️
From the dawn of IT, tech projects have failed and seem to keep on failing. In this podcast series the MD of Atom CTO leverages his years of experience to describe why he believes that tech projects fail and what you can do to ensure that your project delivers on time, on budget and gives you what you want.

Part 1: Communication
Part 2: People
Part 3: Oversight
Part 4: Planning
Part 5: Success

Do you have a tech or project management challenge?

We’re opening our (virtual) doors to two online clinics, just book your place and drop in and chat with our experts. Find out more about the Atom Tech Clinic, and Atom Project Delivery Clinic. 🩺

Atom CTO’s new partnership

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Siya Tech which means we’ll be able to serve more startups from idea to launch and help them realise their tech potential. If you’re a founder with a big idea, keep an eye on the Atom CTO website for more information.

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Editor’s Note

Fractional services have gone mainstream!

This month, I’ve been having more and more conversations with fractional CMOs, CFOs, CCO, CTOs and even fractional legal officers.

It appears that every business function a start-up needs from tech, to finance and even even sales is now available in fractional form: whether that's an hour or day per week, or a few days per month.

Is this a good thing?

I would say yes - but I am biased. However, the concept speaks for itself: having to only pay for what you need as well as benefitting from a fractional's rich expertise without having to commit to a full-time hire makes business sense.

In this month’s stand-out podcast, I talk with Alysha Randall about fractional work and specifically about her work as a fractional CFO. Over on LinkedIn, I've written a series of articles about how to find the right fractional CTO, bearing in mind that not all fractional CTOs are the same, they come in many flavours.

As with any kind of service, the person providing that service has different experiences, strengths and weaknesses and if you are thinking about bringing some part time help in to solve some business issues, you need to do your due diligence!

As mentioned in an article below, the funding landscape is getting tougher, VCs are finally doing more due diligence on their investee companies which means that you as a founder or a business owner are going to have to get your books and documentation in order and this is where someone fractional can really help.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

For companies to be able to respond tactically, the recruitment of fractional executives is becoming more and more popular both to ensure the most optimal ROI as well as implementing strategy and having oversight. 🦊

Why should you hire a fractional CTO? In the first article in the series, Bhairav explains the difference between a fractional CTO and a consultant and who would benefit from one. Part two is also live too. 🤖

When will generative AI start to pay off? Capturing the value of generative AI is proving to be harder than expected, but how can you gain a competitive advantage? Read the McKinsey article here. 🔮

You might have heard that Girls Aloud is making a comeback, well so is Due Diligence. There’s been a surge in VCs carrying out checks to thoroughly evaluate an opportunity. 🦅

Quite concerning, yet not much of a surprise - Chat GPT has been linked to memory loss and procrastination in students. 🍺

Do you have a WTF journal? If you’re managing a new team it might be time to get one. Instead of bringing up a problem, let it sot for a couple of weeks instead. 🧘🏽‍♂️

Atom CTO Podcasts

Why you should hire a Fractional CFO 🏦
Bhairav chats to Alysha Randall about when to consider hiring someone for a strategic, high-level perspective of a company’s finances.

Podcast Series: Understanding why tech projects fail 🤷🏾‍♀️
From the dawn of IT, tech projects have failed and seem to keep on failing. In this podcast series the MD of Atom CTO leverages his years of experience to describe why he believes that tech projects fail and what you can do to ensure that your project delivers on time, on budget and gives you what you want.

Part 1: Communication
Part 2: People
Part 3: Oversight
Part 4: Planning
Part 5: Success

Do you have a tech or project management quandary?

We’re opening our (virtual) doors to two online clinics, just book your place and drop in and chat with our experts. Find out more about the Atom Tech Clinic, and Atom Project Delivery Clinic. 🩺

Atom CTO’s new partnership

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Siya Tech which means we’ll be able to serve more startups from idea to launch and help them realise their tech potential. If you’re a founder with a big idea, keep an eye on the Atom CTO website for more information.

Subscribe to the Atom CTO podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Introduction: The Evolving Role of a CTO

I’m going to show my age here but when I was starting off my career in tech I actually wanted to be a CIO.  Those were the (mostly) guys sitting on the board with the CEO and CFO whereas the CTO would report to the CIO and be in charge of the boring tech stuff, the CIO handled all of the interesting projects.

Something happened a while ago where the role of the CTO got thrust into the limelight and now the term CIO is better known as “Chief Investment Officer” rather than “Chief Information Officer”.

If you are to ask me, it was the explosion in start-ups in the early 2000s that propelled the role of the CTO into the limelight, CIOs were stuffy old people sitting on boards, the CTOs were the cool ones building tech.

Regardless of the reason, people know about CTOs now, however, from the discussions I’ve had running Atom CTO, there’s still a lot of confusion about what we do, when to hire one and what to expect when you have hired one.  People know even less about what it means to have a Fractional CTO.

My hope is that by the end of this article you’ll have a better picture about what fractional CTOs do, what the benefits of having one are and when to consider bringing someone on board.

What is a Fractional CTO?

At a very basic level, a fractional CTO is a person that will dedicate a part of their time to help you with your tech needs at a senior level.

The fact that they are fractional means that they won’t be with you full time but the quality and intensity of the work you’ll get from them should be the same as if they are with you full time.

So this is just another name for a consultant right?

Well no. For me, the most important difference between a consultant and a fractional CTO (or any fractional resource for that matter) is ownership.

I’ve been a consultant. In those days, I’d go into work for a client, do the project work, make some recommendations and move on. The real responsibility for owning the decisions and the implementation of the recommendations rested with the client, not me.

As a fractional CTO the buck stops with you. You are a part of the company, you are a part of the leadership team.  The decisions you make will impact the business and it will be up to you to fix things if they don’t go quite as expected.

This is how it should be….and this is how you should view a fractional CTO when you bring them on board.

Why should I hire a Fractional CTO?

Look around you.  

Do you have anyone in your team that has a holistic view of tech within your business?  

Is there someone thinking about the strategic direction for technology and how it should align with your business strategy?

Do you have the budget to pay a full time CTO?

Are you thinking about implementing tech within your business but the only tech experts you have are the guys that are updating your laptops and PCs and managing your email?

You should hire a fractional CTO when you are looking spend some significant money on technology so that it will improve your business, whether that is:

• Opening up new revenue streams to increase your top line.

• Creating efficiencies through automation to decrease your bottom line.

• Jumping on the next shiny new bandwagon and do something with blockchain or AI or the metaverse.

• Etc. etc.

If you are thinking of spending on tech but have no tech expertise then you need to get in someone that can tell you how to spend your money wisely.

You also want someone to come in that is accountable for the success or failure of whatever initiatives you decide to move ahead with.  The worst feeling is when you’ve implemented a new system, you’ve paid the consultant a lot of money and they have left you with something that you kind of wanted but isn’t quite 100% what you really wanted or what they promised you.

A good fractional CTO will not let that happen and at the very least will be accountable for turning things around.

What should I know when hiring a Fractional CTO?

The most important thing you need to know is that not all fractional CTOs are made equal.  We all have our different strengths.

Just like ice cream, we come in many flavours.  You have to ask yourself which flavour you want.  

At Atom CTO, we have a network of CTOs and each of them have their own specialities, I’ll name a few:

• Generalist: Someone who has a broad knowledge of tech and may have worked across many industries but never really specialised in a single area

• Technical Specialists: Those that are blockchain fanatics or only do NLP when it comes to AI, these are people that thoroughly love their technical area

• Strategic: Forward thinkers who are great at running operations and working with the business to plan ahead

• Zero to One: People that only want to do the hard stuff at the beginning and get their hands dirty to get a project up and running but once it is live, they want to move onto the next challenge

• IPO Specialists: CTOs that can get you ready for IPO

• Growth Specialists: Those that have great experience in scaling tech teams but don’t really know how to deal with smaller ones

The list goes on as you can imagine but the biggest misconception I feel that occurs with CTOs is that people think that they all code.  If you’ve been in the game as long as I have, you may dabble with new tech from time to time but you don’t have the time to code as you spend most of your time in meetings or writing documents.

What do Fractional CTOs do?

We come to the million dollar question because the answer to this is the answer to what value a fractional CTO will bring.

Remember that you are hiring a fractional CTO because you cannot afford to pay full salary for a highly experienced senior tech resource but you need the knowledge that one brings.

Fractional CTOs will do different things depending on what stage and state your business is in.

If you’re looking to bring on someone early on in a start-up, the fractional CTO won’t be the coder (sure you can give a coder the title of a CTO but that doesn’t mean they are fulfilling the role).  

The fractional CTO will help you set the roadmap for tech, help shape operations, be risk focused, be security minded, will help you understand that an app is not a business and that you will need tech in different parts of the organisation in order to go to market effectively and that you will need to tie that tech together so you can have a holistic view of your business.

For scale-ups the fractional CTO will look towards setting the culture for the tech organisation, building the team, spending about 80% of the time on operations and 20% on strategy. The fractional CTO will be there to ensure that you build new tech whilst not losing sight of serving your existing customers.

For SMEs and evolving businesses the fractional will look more towards strategy, how can you use tech to drive business, how can you gain more customers, retain the ones you have and lower the cost of doing business.  Fractional CTOs help with digital transformation, compliance, governance, all of the the unsexy activities you need to do as an established business.

Of course there is more to this but my aim by giving these examples is that a good fractional CTO, someone that is more senior will have been there and done all of these things and they will be bringing their knowledge to bear on your business - albeit for a fraction of their time. 

In Conclusion

The way of work is changing. Tech is getting more expensive. We no longer need to be in the office and you as a business owner don’t need to have a full time CTO if you don’t need one or can’t afford one.

What you cannot afford is to spend time, money and effort on tech with no one to manage it so when you are thinking about your next big tech spend, consider adding a budget line for a good fractional CTO.

Editor’s Note

I recently spoke to an exciting young entrepreneur in South Africa as part of the mentorship work I do at the Founder Institute and I was impressed by how he’d manage to spend the last 6 months bootstrapping the build of his MVP.

I remarked on how far he’d come in the time that I had known him, however, rather than being full of joy at finally having something he could put in front of his potential clients, he was a little defeated.

When I asked him why he wasn’t jumping for joy, he talked about how he had been around the houses searching for development agencies to help him and the first two companies he met ripped him off, they took payment and delivered nothing.

Given what we do at Atom CTO, I was pretty perplexed as to why he hadn’t asked me to help him out when selecting a team and his response, though very sweet and thoughtful, was also quite frustrating - he didn’t want to bother me with his problems.

Of course as a mentor and not least as a fractional CTO, these are the exact situations we are meant to be involved with so it made me wonder that when advice is there for the taking and it is free, why don’t more people take advantage of it.

The good news is that from now on he will be availing of free help that me and my team can give him and I urge you to do the same.

Atom will be running two free weekly clinics on tech and project management / delivery which are linked at the bottom of the newsletter.

Also in this newsletter, we’re linking to a series of podcasts of what I have learned over the years as to why projects fail. The example I just gave of the entrepreneur that got burnt is one that fulfils at least two of the 4 criteria I have identified as to why projects fail, in this case it was People and Oversight.

I very much hope that this podcast series, along with the clinics we’re running will help you avoid all of the costly mistakes when engaging with design agencies.

As a business owner you have time, money and energy, use them all wisely and get good help when you need it!

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

When deciding to build vs buy, ask yourself these questions on how you want to scale, technological advantage and whether the benefits outweigh the costs. ⚖️

Learn AI through spreadsheets? You can learn how AI and LLMs work thanks to a series of online sessions, entirely on Excel. 👓

Are you looking for your people? Discover websites of creators, thinkers and doers to find collaborators and like-minded people. 🫛

Chat GPT’s competitor, Claude 3 has just had a major update, setting new industry benchmarks across reasoning, maths, coding, multilingual understanding, and vision.🧠

The leadership drug - read this article about what really makes a leader, plus likely not to be anyone ‘on the leadership team’. 🍭

Listen for the quiet ‘no’ when you feel like you have to say yes, it’ll help you become more productive and enable you to focus your energy in the areas that really matter to you. 🐠

Atom CTO Podcasts

Helping Nigerian businesses achieve their full potential 🌳 - Listen to this interview with Zumah Yahaya, founder of Boubid which provides strategy, management and growth support to Nigerian businesses.

Podcast Series: Understanding why tech projects fail 🤷🏾‍♀️
From the dawn of IT, tech projects have failed and seem to keep on failing. In this podcast series the MD of Atom CTO leverages his years of experience to describe why he believes that tech projects fail and what you can do to ensure that your project delivers on time, on budget and gives you what you want.

Part 1: Communication
Part 2: People
Part 3: Oversight
Part 4: Planning
Part 5: Success

Do you have a tech or project management quandary?

We’re opening our (virtual) doors to two online clinics, just book your place and drop in and chat with our experts. Find out more about the Atom Tech Clinic, and Atom Project Delivery Clinic. 🩺

Subscribe to the Atom Ventures podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

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Editor’s Note

I was recently at an event run by our friends at Phase One which had a series of PE and VC investors talking about what businesses that are seeking early stage funding need to know about how to get it.

I’ve been to many of these events and I have to say that I was very impressed with the calibre of speaker and the fact that much of the advice was well worn:

• Be humble

• Have a problem to solve

• Know your competitors

• Build a strong team

• Show some product-market-fit i.e. traction

• Know your numbers

What I found most refreshing was the honesty of the investors - times are tough, you’re going to find it hard to get funding so your better have a great product in a market that can scale in order to raise funds from them.

There were two things that were missing for me though. One was the lack of representation of Angel Investors on the panel - we think very differently to VCs and PE and the lack of thought to how minority founders can access funds and here is my gripe - each one of the panellists said that cold outreach was no good - you needed to have a warm introduction.

I’m sorry (and I am about to go on a bit of a rant here) but that is not good enough. How do you get the warm introductions? Most of the VCs / PE crowd aren’t ethnically diverse, they didn’t grow up in the deprived neighbourhoods and the ones on the panel at least all had banking / finance backgrounds.

Funders in general need to to better, we can’t have a system where the only way to access money is to know the right people. Yes, “go to events” they say, but how do you find out about them? I do mentoring in local communities near where I live so I can make intros but I can guarantee you that not one of the start-ups I have mentored would have known about that event I went to.

Rant over. In this month’s newsletter we’ve added a link to Europe’s most active angel networks - its a small gesture but going forwards, we’re going to try harder to connect minority businesses to funding - especially since the change to the accredited investor rules have changed and the fact that funding is tight. All this means is that those that are underserved will remain that way.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Looking for funding? We hear that ore and more solo investors are coming together to form angel investor networks and our friends at Sifted have put together a list of Europe’s most active angel networks. 👼

Is marketing a joke? CEOs are concerned that marketing metrics tied to business impact less than 60 percent of the time. Fret not marketers, there are ways to restore trust in your business leaders. 🤝

Ready to converge with other start up leaders AND investors? Secure your spot for this year’s EU-Startups Summit in Malta! From reputable speakers to networking opportunities, it’s the event to be at as a European start-up. 🎉

What is is like to be a CEO in a PE or VC backed business? Our friend Mark Farrer-Brown has written a series of articles that talks about what it is like to actually work for companies that have received both types of investment, a must read if you are thinking about a raise. 💰

Atom CTO Podcasts

If you’ve yet to put your customers first, this is your sign to do so 🥇 In this new episode of the latest season, Alan Clarke and Bhairav Patel discuss the steps in creating a more customer-centric business.

From the archive

Whilst we are gearing up for the next season of the podcast, we thought we share some gems from past, podcasts where the guests provide timeless information:

Back in 2020, we interviewed Joanna Vargas, entrepreneur and host of The Get Up Girl podcast. In this episode, Joanna talks about her inspirational journey 🛄 through the world of business as well as how she inspires other women to wake up, live life to the fullest and achieve their goals.

Who thought a travel book could also be a guide to starting and running your own business? Back in 2021, we interviewed Dina Preson-Ortiz and Don Ortiz who had written a book called 31 Cents to 43 Countries which outlined their journey around the 🌎as penniless musicians. This interview is fascinating in that they relate all of the choices and experiences they had to entrepreneurship, a truly fascinating listen.

Subscribe to the Atom Ventures podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Editor’s Note

What will 2024 bring for you? What are your aims and objectives for this year?

I’ve been talking to a number of business owners, founders and I have to say the mood music is mixed. Some have said that they’re just running through the motions this year in the hope that 2025 will bring something better, others are bullish that things will pick up significantly towards the second half of the year.

2023 was certainly not a great year for start-ups or tech in general. It was harder to get funding (unless you were an AI company), Big Tech fired a lot of people and clients were spending less because of a fear of recession.

Will 2024 be any different? Well, who knows quite frankly - and that’s the thing.

When you’re running a business you can’t expect every year to be a bonanza, you need to plan for the downtimes and reap all the rewards you can in the uptimes.

As you will see further down in the newsletter, I spent the Xmas period putting together a podcast made up of the best pieces of advice that my podcast guests had ever received and there are some gems there but one that stands out for me is:

“You can only make the best choices at the time with the information you have available”

In other words, you can control your choices and everything else is out of your control.

For those of you who are wondering what 2024 will bring, you can’t worry about what you don’t know - you can of course ensure you gather the best information possible to help you make your decisions but other than that, you just have to go with what you do know.

One thing that helped me refocus for 2024 was reading Mark Farrer-Brown’s two-part essay on the “Jobs to Done” theory which you can find here and here. The premise of the articles is to push business owners into thinking of a customer-centric approach which is something I believe we all understand intrinsically but we sometimes forget as we get lots in focusing on our services and products.

These articles provided me the spark to rethink Atom’s approach to customers and what that in turn makes you realise is that no matter what 2024 brings from a macroeconomic or global perspective, if you serve the customer’s needs, they will come to you.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Will GenAI change the landscape of software delivery? Amid the buzz of leveraging generative AI (GenAI) for accelerated software delivery, it's crucial to revisit the fundamentals. It's not just about coding; it's about optimizing teams and finding the right leverage points for effective software delivery 🖥️

Avoid hidden fundraising costs! Hidden fundraising costs are on the rise for over a third of European startups, with 51% needing to secure their next funding round within six months, according to a recent Sifted survey of 107 startups 🚀

Since 2021, four rapidly growing European tech companies, including Volta Trucks, highlighted by Sifted, have faced bankruptcy or acquisition. In contrast, German defense tech startup Helsing not only sustains its position but also secures a €209m Series B amidst heightened investor interest due to geopolitical tensions 📉

Seeking funding for 2024? If you’re an early-stage tech company looking for pre-seed, seed and A-round funding, an avenue to try is Fuel Ventures. Submit your application today 💰 Also, explore this list of angel investors 😇

Rest of World's diverse 2023 coverage, spanning from Paytm's fintech growth in India to innovative startups in Sudan aiding food accessibility and migrants surviving through delivery apps at the U.S.-Mexico border, reflects a global tech landscape, with around 500 articles from 50 countries, offering readers an insightful vision beyond AI and Elon Musk 🌎

While marketing often has a presence in strategic discussions, its credibility within the business is challenged; thoughtful marketers, though creative and customer-focused, face a credibility struggle, but well-executed thought leadership initiatives can serve as a means to rebuild trust 🤝

In 2024, headlines brought back grim themes, with war and famine stalking Ukraine and the Holy Land. Despite this, positive trends emerge, including realistic hopes for limiting global warming. Beyond daily news, uplifting moments persist in the human narrative 🗞️

Each year, MIT Technology Review searches for impactful technologies that are poised to make a real difference in the world. Here are the advances they consider most significant at the moment 🤖

Yet to explore CoPilot? Microsoft’s AI companion has impacted over 5 million users by supercharging their creativity and productivity. Learn how you can leverage it for daily use 🎨

The Puritans of Venture Capital: Venture was once a cottage industry. Some firms are still operating as if nothing has really changed. Can they endure? Will capital agglomerators consume their lunch? Or can they coexist? 💼

Atom CTO Podcasts

Sage advice to get you through the rest of the year 🍀 - We’ve compiled the nuggets of wisdom from our podcast guests through the years by asking them the best piece of advice they’ve received or given.

Embracing the power of innovation 🚀 - This podcast episode delves into a conversation with Damilare Ogunleye, the visionary founder of FoodLama. Explore the innovative world of grocery shopping that's poised to transform your cart-filling experience.

It’s time for some self-recognition ❤️- Bhairav and Alan tackle the topic of recognizing your efforts as a founder. Here’s to not downplaying your success in 2024.

Subscribe to the Atom Ventures podcast here 🎧

Apple: https://tinyurl.com/s9k3zuz
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/vuny4pc
Google: https://tinyurl.com/4d38hsuv
SoundCloud: https://tinyurl.com/5h4ch2jh

Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
Follow on Twitter
Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com

Over the Xmas period, we decided to extract their answers from each podcast episode and have them written up so that everyone can benefit from the sage advice given by people that have started their own business and understand the struggles of being an entrepreneur.

I hope you find this as insightful as I did whilst editing the podcasts.

Toni Grundwald

Mike Orchard

Bill Boulden

Andrew Grimshaw

Xavier Ballester

Sudeshna Mukhopadhyay

Damilare Ogunleye

Adib Bamieh

Kos Chekanov

Victor Chel

Davor Culjak

Davor Bagaric

Svjetlana Vukic

Ernest Daddey

Georgina Willison

Ian Sutherland

Idowu Akinde

Selby Cary

Callum Denyer

Omar Tufayl

Tim Beattie

Bella Bardswell

Samuel Villegas

Pankaj Patel

Mike Greyling

Mark Zurich

Mark Peacock

Jan Cavelle

Christian Sorensen

James Cook

Frank Oelshlager

Andre de Wet

Manoj Sangany

Keshni Morar