For non-technical founders, hiring the first senior technology leader is one of the highest-stakes decisions in a business's history. Get it right and you accelerate. Get it wrong and you can lose 12–18 months of momentum while spending ₹50–80L on misaligned compensation.
What a CTO at a growing MSME actually does
In a ₹20–100Cr business, the CTO is primarily a leader, architect, and translator — not a coder. They translate business requirements into technology decisions, build and lead the tech team, and ensure the technology backbone scales as the business grows. If you need someone to write code, hire a senior engineer.
The 3 mistakes that kill first tech hires
Mistake 1: Hiring from large tech companies. Enterprise tech skills don't always map to the resource-constrained, move-fast context of an MSME. Look for people who have built things from scratch, not just maintained large systems. Mistake 2: Hiring a VP without a team. A CTO without engineers to lead becomes an expensive individual contributor. Hire a senior engineer first; promote or hire a CTO when you have 3–4 engineers. Mistake 3: Giving equity without vesting. Standard is 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff. Non-negotiable.
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