Dimitri
Partner
from Belgium
CTO as a Service: Coaching and mentoring for SaaS leaders
We train (experienced) CTOs and engineering managers in the SaaS industry to become better tech leaders with the help of our CTOs in residence and CTO ad interim services. They learn the most important leadership team skills to lead a SaaS business software team.
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is a key executive player in your growing startup. Having the right person in the right role is crucial for growth and setting the right strategic priorities.
By being the technical voice in your (management) team, our experienced CTOs ad interim make sure the technical side of your business gets the attention it deserves. This is how we approach executive coaching for technical SaaS teams, and especially tech leaders.
With our CTO coaching sessions we approach executive coaching for technical SaaS teams, and especially tech leaders and staff engineers, focusing on self knowledge and leadership skills.
What is the role of a CTO in SaaS companies?
To build a software product, you usually need a team with many different roles, for example a CTO, staff engineers a VP of Engineering, or a team lead. The different mindset and skills needed to fill these roles successfully, evolve as your product grows and, to be honest, most of the time you don't need all these roles on a full-time basis.
It’s extremely hard these days to find the right person to fill in at the right times. Our experienced team can solve this by taking on a number of roles depending on your current stage. We have expertise as interim CTO, engineering manager, and VPoE.
In the early days, you probably need a tech-savvy hacker type of profile. While after the first successes, the main skills of the Chief Technology Officer shifts towards a visionary and strategic thinker. When the business is blooming, your CTO or tech leader is now responsible for people management, process, and structure. It’s very unlikely that the same person can fulfill this role when the business transitions between these various stages. The potential impact of the wrong profile is no to be underestimated.
Want to know more about the role of a CTO?
Executive CTO coach and mentors
After auditing more than 120 startups and scaleups in the tech industry, we’ve often come to the conclusion that the right people are not taking up the right roles. Creating awareness around these vulnerabilities is one thing, acting upon it seems to be the hardest nut to crack.
Our executive coaching sessions will help tech leaders become better, more reliable, confident and self aware leaders. If you’ve been tasked with something outside your comfort zone, we can help. Learn how to assess outcomes, provide ample feedback, create a focused roadmap, and deliver on your promises.
Therefore, we need to build trust in the technical teams first. We do this by joining the development team in the trenches and helping the business on a daily basis. With the help of our engineering managers and CTOs ad interim, we can slowly make changes in (technical) processeses your sparring partner, improve documentation and workflows, and create a better development culture in general.
When the time is right, we train your people to take over our role as Chief Technical Officer or engineering manager with hands-on guidance and programming techniques, self awareness, upgraded tooling, and other processes tailored to your business needs.
Another difficult topic is hiring or offboarding, which is often uncomfortable and emotional. If needed, we can also advise you when taking the hardest of decisions – letting people go. Internal and external communication is a tricky thing to get right, but we have some ideas and good practices there. Our goal is to make the evolution of your team as smooth as possible with the help of a CTO coach. The potential impact a better tech leader has on it's team is really huge.
Our in-house CTO coaches and are ready to help
Do you need an interim CTO?
To answer the question, you need to look at the phase your product and your company are in.
Whether you are just starting to refine a new product idea or want to finally aim for that version 2.0, you need different solutions. And madewithlove (with our CTO coaches) can help with that.
The war on talent is hard. Hiring a CTO is a very challenging task. The good ones usually already have a successful career and are not willing to take a leap of faith by joining a new startup. But there are options: you can decide to work with freelance CTOs or agencies that offer CTO as a service. Or maybe your new CTO is already part of your team, you just haven’t realised it yet.
Our CTO Coaches can plan out the right strategy to get your MVP to the next stage, or we can help you manage existing technical debt.
Need a near- or long-term plan to scale technically along with the expected growth in usage? Do you need a long-term technical vision? A clear view on how to evolve your team? The madewithlove tech leadership mentors can help you there too with our coaching sessions.
Next to executive coaching, we can also back you up with the right software engineers or product managers to bridge the gap while you continue your search for the right people.
What does madewithlove do?
Clients we helped with executive coaching, CTO ad interim, and engineering management
These are some of the companies we have helped with growing towards success or with their investment rounds.
Flexmail: Email Marketing solution
The madewithlove team works alongside us, treated our product with the love and attention it deserved and actively challenged us throughout the entire product development process. — Michelle Dassen (Head of Product)
Teamleader: CRM, project management, and invoicing in one simple tool
As a real transition-expert, Andreas helped us with creating the software. This wasn't an easy task because our technical team had to grow alongside the number of clients. — Jeroen De Wit (CEO)
3D Aim Trainer: Best Game to Test & Practice your FPS Aim
Madewithlove helped us build the blueprint, not the house. Advice was given in a fair and direct way, while keeping room for discussion and without pushing personal preferences. — Robin Haegeman (CTO)
And many more
Click the logos to see these great products we helped build
Must reads about CTOs in tech startups
The Compassionate Shift in Tech Language
Evolving language in tech is not just about changing terms; it's about empathy, inclusiveness, and understanding the impact of our words.
CTO as a Service (CaaS) in SaaS — Is it useful for your startup?
CTO as a Service, or CaaS, offers startups the expertise of a Chief Technology Officer without the need for a full-time executive. An experienced Fractional CTO will work part-time for your startup, and this is why you could benefit of having one.
Pulse Episode 13: Jason Fried on Trust, Hiring, and Rehiring
Andreas talks with Jason Fried, founder of 37signals (Basecamp), about rehiring and trust in the workplace. They discuss the "trust battery," representing trust levels and its fluctuations. Jason emphasizes enthusiasm and fit in hiring, and they explore rehiring former employees and role dynamics.
To check if we can help with leadership team coaching sessions & mentoring
Want us to be your CTO ad interim? Arrange a free, 30-minute call with Andreas to find out how we can help you. There’s no commitment—we just want to understand your needs.
We’re getting booked up pretty quickly, so the sooner you get in touch, the sooner we can help you…