Christina Meng’s Post

Finding the right CTO or early tech hires is a major challenge for many founders—and equally, technical folks often struggle to find the right startup opportunities. I’m exploring ways to better connect devs, engineers, and technical leaders with early-stage startups. For those of you in technical roles: How are you finding opportunities to join startups as CTOs or early hires? What’s worked, and what gaps do you see? Would love to hear your thoughts—drop a comment👇 or DM me! #Startup #TechTalent #CTO #EarlyStageStartups #Networking #Hiring #VC #Innovation #DeveloperCommunity #SF

You know you're doing something right when your inbox is flooded with clients sending appreciation emails and videos to your engineering teams everyday! Ideas2IT Technologies' engineering PODs have worked wonders whether it's a single founding engineer for a seed stage startup or a 200 people team building intricate tech for a large enterprise. Why is it working so successfully, that too a 100% of the work being core development work and not staffing but entire projects and roadmaps? Ownership. Let's keep it coming, team! #engineering #buildingtechteams #founders #startups

When should startups scale their tech teams? In early rounds like pre-seed and seed, staying lean is critical. Hiring a small, flexible team helps build your MVP efficiently. Many startups at this stage turn to staff augmentation, allowing them to control costs and pivot quickly. As one of our client's shared, “Staff augmentation was the perfect solution for us, helping set up initial product engineering workflows and providing high-quality engineering capacity when needed.” By Series A, growth is the name of the game. Adding developers, QAs, and UX/UI designers not only accelerates product development but also signals to investors that you’re ready to scale. At Series B, it’s time to expand into new markets. That’s where global staffing model come in, helping startups bring in top talent from around the world. The right hires at the right time can be a powerful lever for growth. #TechGrowth #ScalingStartups #TechLeadership #VC

Scaling the runway Early stage startup founders who have a small team, 2-10 people know the story of running lean, taking very little money out of the company, and pushing hard to go fast and launch or scale. To go a bit faster can make the difference between getting off the ground. But it is a tradeoff. Working as hard as you can. There are only so many hours in a day. And only one of you. Can't hire another head as it is another mouth to feed and causes anguish about the runway. What Razortooth can do is add a team to your team, at a fixed cost with no surprises. We can provide a mix of CTO/PM/Dev/DevOps/QA/ReleaseEngineering for a nominal monthly retainer based on the number of hours you need each month, and likely at cost of less than adding a new full time member to the team. With experience in the range of projects from mobile and embedded systems, all the way to the cloud, we can ramp up quickly for as long as you need the the team. We've worked with over 30 different startups over the years and can bring knowledge, and a network of partners and top notch talent to bring into your team. DM me us for more information and a quick discussion.

Don't just hire engineers... Hire people who actually understand your product and its users! And then keep your teams deeply in sync with one another! #Startups #Growth #Tech

Do you think about re-engineering your product soon? If stronger technical leadership and a clearer vision are what you seek, and you're pondering CTO-as-a-Service but unsure if it fits your needs, begin by pinpointing the exact challenges your #startup is facing. Since 2010, Mobilunity has successfully built over 100 dedicated teams, interviewed approximately 3000 candidates, and sharpened our ability to match each of our clients from more than 15 countries with the ideal team. Throughout this period, we have provided CTO services to leaders in InsurTech, #FinTech startups, and #ecommerce industries. Our experience confirms that the right CTO can dramatically transform team dynamics and outcomes 🚀. Explore how a leading Swiss #InsurTech company benefited from hiring a remote CTO through us. Find the link in the comments.

#StartupEquity #FoundingEngineer #EquityExpectations Hey everyone! 👋 I could really use your advice. I’m currently working at a startup as the founding engineer, and I’ve been here for a couple of months now. We’ve developed our MVP, and things are looking positive since we’ve started making some revenue, but there’s no outside funding just yet. 🚀 Here’s where I’m a bit stuck: I’ve put a hefty amount of work into the backend and have even done some of it for free, all because I know one of the founders personally and, honestly, it’s been way more fun than my 9-to-5 job! Now that the legal papers are finally sorted out, I’m trying to nail down what my equity expectations should really be. Right now, we’re bootstrapped, and there’s some uncertainty about whether we’ll even need investors down the line. The equity split they have in mind is 25% for employees and investors combined. They’re suggesting I get around 5-6% equity because they believe investors would be hesitant to come on boa... Am I Unrealistic About Startup Equity Expectations as a Founding Engineer? Answers:  https://lnkd.in/ggFZ73H9 Let's Connect! Have you faced similar challenges? S...

Last week a startup CTO shared something that's been keeping me up at night. His team just hit 100k users without a single in-house engineer. This goes against everything we've been told about scaling startups. But the data tells an interesting story. Three key insights from fast-growing startups: - Internal engineering teams are becoming a liability - Development partners are shipping 3x faster - Capital is better spent on growth than on hiring  Last night, I ran the numbers on building an engineering team: - $1.2M annually for a 10-person team - 6 months to hire each senior role - 40% of early hires leave within 18 months The fastest-growing companies we’ve worked with are taking a different approach. They're staying lean Moving fast.  & putting their capital into growth instead of hiring. Strategic development partnerships are giving them what internal teams can't: - Instant scalability - Senior-level expertise from day one - Zero recruitment costs - Faster time to market A client crossed $1M ARR last quarter using this model. They focused purely on product-market fit and customer acquisition. For development, they partnered instead of hiring. What happened: - Deployment speed: 3x faster - Code quality: Significantly higher - Burn rate: 40% lower - Feature delivery: 2x faster The old model of building large engineering teams early isn't just expensive - it's becoming obsolete. Smart startups are staying lean, moving fast, and scaling through partnerships. That's not theory. That's what's working today.

Here's why it's a bad idea to hire the "rockstar programmer" for your startup: 1. They likely won't mesh with the team. 2. They could disrupt the dynamic. 3. They might not work well with others. Instead, hire people who can work well in a team. You need people who: 1. Collaborate effectively. 2. Communicate transparently. 3. Embrace accountability. That's how you build a productive team. And remember, there is no "I" in TEAM. #teambuilding #productivity #startup