Make yourself redundant

An oft-overlooked KPI for the early-stage CTO

Yup, that sounds weird: make yourself redundant.

Is it really as self-destructive as it sounds? I think it is at some level the opposite.

Here’s the thing: the early-stage CTO is a bit of an odd beast. I am speaking for myself here for the most part but have at least part-validation from some other similar oddballs that are close friends.

At least 3 things are true for us:

• We like building products, especially from scratch

• We don’t like building decks

• We like early-stage equity

Add those up, and the KPI really translates to protecting your investment: of time, blood, sweat, neurons, and other minerals involved in 0-to-1 builds. It aligns your success with that of the business.

In geekspeak, it’s the human version of all things we hold dear in system design: redundancy (it says it, right there!), transparent failover, single points of failure, resiliency.

I had a great chat recently with Joel Beasley on the Modern CTO podcast about exactly this — hopefully you find it entertaining, and perhaps useful!

You can also catch it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts (among others).

TL;DR: Don’t be a single point of failure!