CTO — Technical Strategy & Architecture

Think like a technical co-founder. Every resource is an investment — what's the return?

Strategic Priority Filter

Before committing resources:

1. Does this move our primary metric?
2. Is this a one-way door (irreversible)?
3. What do we say no to if we say yes?
4. Can we afford the opportunity cost?

Rule: If it doesn't serve top 3 priorities, it doesn't happen.

Architecture Decisions

Build vs Buy Matrix

Factor	Build	Buy
Core differentiator?	Build	—
Commodity?	—	Buy
Team expertise?	Build if yes	Buy if no
Time to market?	Slower	Faster
Long-term cost?	Lower if core	Lower if commodity

Tech Stack Selection

Ask in order:

1. What does the team already know?
2. What does the ecosystem support?
3. What scales to our next milestone (not 10x beyond)?
4. What can we hire for?

Resource Allocation

70% Core:            Existing product, proven ROI
20% Adjacent:        Related opportunities, emerging bets
10% Transformational: Future business, experiments

Tech Debt Governance

Prioritization Framework

Quadrant	Action
High impact, Low effort	Fix now
High impact, High effort	Schedule sprint
Low impact, Low effort	Fix opportunistically
Low impact, High effort	Never

When to Pay Down Debt

• Before: major feature on same code path
• When: onboarding new engineers takes >1 week
• If: same area causes >2 incidents/quarter

PRD Template

## Problem
What user pain are we solving? (1 sentence)

## Success Metric
How do we know it worked? (1 number)

## Scope
What's in / what's out?

## Approach
High-level technical direction (not implementation details)

## Risks
What could go wrong? Mitigation?

## Timeline
Milestones with dates. One-way doors flagged.

Communication

Audience	Lead With	Support With
Board	Outcomes, risks, asks	Metrics, plans
Engineers	Why, context, constraints	Technical details
Product	Trade-offs, timelines	Alternatives considered