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As a SaaS startup begins to see success with corporate clients, it often faces a tension between rapid iteration for product-market fit (PMF) and the stability needs of its users. Which release strategies balance the company’s need for rapid iteration with clients' need for stability? This is especially true with API dependencies, where Hyrum’s Law applies: “With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.” In a recent discussion, CTOs shared best practices for managing these dual priorities, offering insights in leveraging continuous deployment, feature flags, and proactive communication to keep corporate clients satisfied while driving growth. Here’s a breakdown of actionable strategies that emerged from their experiences.

What happens when your organization goes from 2 to 250 employees in under 4 years? Well, for starters, you have to address a whole new set of challenges. That’s what some would call “growing pains” - and what happened at Storyblok. In this article, I’ll share why the Storyblok Product Team decided to test the Shape Up method and how we did it. I’ll also share a few of our successes and failures.

The use of AI in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is constantly increasing. Automating code creation, augmenting developer productivity, and enhancing code quality are all drivers for better business outcomes like faster time-to-market, less effort and lower costs. AI is already having a significant impact on web development, and while it’s important to have a vision for what’s next, it is essential to focus on what we have now, before making plans for the future.

Despite potentially reducing your compute costs anywhere from 20-80% and indirectly resulting in your applications being more resilient, Spot instances (or Spot VMs on Google Cloud) aren’t typically used as much as they should be. While reasons range from their less-than-predictable nature, a fear of workload interruptions, or the complexity of setting up and managing them, the most common reason why many avoid using Spot instances is simply a lack of familiarity with them. However, understanding how to navigate these perceived hurdles will help you realize previously-untapped compute savings.

Technical debt is almost always on a CTO’s mind. The accumulated cost of design and implementation trade-offs made during the development process that compromise a software system's long-term health and sustainability is significant.

COVID and the resultant rapid digitalization have heightened technical debt; as per a 2022 report by Software AG, 78% of organizations have accrued more technical debt during the pandemic. To quote Gene Kim, award-winning CTO, researcher, and author: “​​Left unchecked, technical debt will ensure that the only work that gets done is unplanned work!” (from the book “The Phoenix Project”, 2013).

CTOs must be well-equipped to manage and mitigate any organizational risks arising from technical debt.

What do you need to get your company cyber ready? Dr. Melanie Rieback, co-founder and CEO of Radically Open Security gave advice to CTOs on this topic in a recent alphalist CTO podcast. This is what she said.

When it comes to optimizing cloud costs, sometimes you have to read between the lines of your cloud bill.

We often focus on the visible spikes in costs, but what about the subtler, less-obvious signals lurking within those figures?

In a recent Cloud Masters podcast episode, we gathered three Technical Account Managers (TAMs) at DoiT to uncover seven not-so-obvious cloud bill red flags they’ve spotted among their customers, and discussed what you should be doing instead.

These aren’t your typical "in your face" cost spikes; they’re more like subtle hints that something might not be quite right, potentially signaling overspending or less-than-efficient practices.

AI and Machine Learning are becoming integral components of modern content management systems. As a CTO, understanding their potential and how they can enhance your products and services is crucial for staying competitive.

While AI research has been going on for decades, only the public release of ChatGPT by OpenAI sparked a widening interest in the technology. Suddenly, everyone could play around with AI - and most of us have been astonished at how well it works.

Tech companies rushed to implement AI features in their products, thousands of startups were founded, and the average user heard about the possibilities of AI. And, of course, AI-powered features are now being implemented in CMSs. AI is changing how your teams, developers, marketers, and business users operate. In this article, we will look at what the future of AI-powered CMSs could look like.

In today's agile world, how can large organizations operate with the nimbleness and innovation of startups and also allow time for the professional development of all their team members? Enter the Wix model, a unique team topology. The Wix model is more of a unique operational model that the company implemented early on and is still in use at Wix today.. Aviran Mordo, the VP Engineering at Wix talked about their model on the alphalist CTO podcast and we used that as the basis for this article.

By 2025, 95% of enterprises will fail to realise full value from their DevOps and DevSecOps initiatives if they don't adopt platform engineering approaches -says research from Gartner. And Sarah Polan, Field CTO of Hashicorp agrees. In a recent alphalist CTO podcast, Sarah Polan discusses why one needs to use platform engineering and how to go about it. This blog post is based on that podcast.

The job market for CTOs in 2023 has undergone some significant changes, with funding becoming less abundant and location playing an increasingly important role in finding a new role.  Will Larson recently spoke on the alphalist CTO podcast about his experience navigating this landscape and finding his next CTO role. Using the podcast as a abse, in this blog post,we’ll share insights and strategies to help you find the perfect opportunity that aligns with your skills and interests.

The web has seen a significant evolution in terms of user and developer experiences. As developers have moved from multi-page applications (MPAs) to single-page applications (SPAs), it has become apparent that neither option provides the perfect balance between the user experience and developer convenience. This is where PESPA (Progressively Enhanced Single Page Application) comes in. In a recent alphalist CTO podcast, Kent C. Dodds, a co-founder of Remix and thought leader in the Javascript space, introduced us to PESPA and explained how PESPA combines the best of both MPAs and SPAs to deliver improved experiences for both users and developers. This blog post is based on that episode. 

Pricing is a crucial aspect of any SaaS business, and it can be overwhelming for founders to navigate. However, by understanding the concept of a value metric and the importance of investing in pricing optimization, you can develop a pricing strategy that works for your business and your customers. In this blog post (which is based on alphalist CTO podcast episode 68 featuring Patrick Campbell, CEO of ProfitWell), we will cover the ins and outs of SaaS pricing, from finding the right price for your product to continuously optimizing your pricing strategy. We will also discuss how to effectively change the price of your product and how to use legacy tiers and different pricing models (usage-based or tier based) correctly. Whether you're a bootstrapped startup or a scale-up, this guide will provide valuable insights on how to approach SaaS pricing and grow your business.

As a company scales, the role of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) can evolve significantly. At the beginning stages of a company, the CTO may be heavily involved in hands-on technical tasks, such as coding and architecting systems. However, as the company grows and the team expands, the CTO may find themselves taking on more managerial responsibilities, such as organizing and leading teams, budgeting and resource allocation, and working with other departments to align technology strategy with business goals. Not all CTOs like that - some would prefer to be coding or innovating. If you are one of those CTOs, keep reading

Tickets are the backbone of many tech organizations today. But the way many are using tickets is holding them back. Usually, the manager breaks a project up into tasks and assigns them as tickets to the team. But that doesn’t work.  Shape Up Method creator Ryan Singer describes in the alphalist CTO podcast the problem with tickets in the way they are used by most teams, why they should use packages (formerly known as pitches) instead, and how tickets should actually be used.

Technology first: The science behind building successful global app and game business! How can you earn money from your mobile app or game? Carlo Szelinsky, Co-CEO & Founder @ applike Group ($100M+ ARR through apps and games)  shared on a recent CTO podcast the parts you need in place to start making money from your mobile app. It starts with finding out which advertisement brings users to your app (attribution), continues with in-app analytics to help you improve your product and finally - getting others to advertise on your app (monetisation). Let’s get started

If you run an eCommerce web application and are tasked with creating a mobile version  - you have 2 options - either have a separate Mobile team code and maintain a natively written mobile app OR containerize your web application so you can continue to use just one application. Aron Spohr, the CTO of Flaschenpost, runs a flourishing grocery delivery service in Germany, and in a recent alphalist CTO podcast he discussed why Flaschenpost runs their mobile app in a hybrid way instead of employing a separate Mobile team to code it natively.

Why do people choose to code in C++ where there are many other languages available? In a recent CTO podcast, Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, talked (among other things) about what makes C++ so useful in the context of its strengths and weaknesses.He also discussed the past, present and future of C++.

This is a written extract of some of the ideas he talked about in the podcast. 

What do different engineers do at each level? Yonatan Zunger shared insight into each rank and role in the IC Career track so you know who to hire to solve which problems. 

Most Job Postings mention a required tech stack. After all, every language is nuanced. But software craftsmanship legend Robert C. Martin - better known as Uncle Bob - argues that you should focus on hiring good programmers who are able to think beyond just one language. Here are the reasons he shared on a recent alphalist CTO podcast.

Find out how to develop effective tooling efficiently in this article which is based on a podcast featuring Kathryn Koehler, Director of Developer Productivity Engineering at Netflix. In it she shares what kind of tooling you should focus on building, whether you should build or buy your tooling, and how to measure the success of your tooling in developer satisfaction and productivity.

The Talent Wars Are On! It's a candidate market. Other companies might be offering higher salaries, but you have something other companies don’t - a leader committed to making sure employees are happy (which is why you are reading this article).

So how do you keep them happy?

The key to retention is engagement.  The greater the engagement of the employee, the longer they're going to stay with you. And when they're engaged, productivity goes up and profitability follows. 

Furthermore, happy employees attract employees. By solving your retention issues, your people will become your greatest ambassadors. They will say to other talent “Hey, come over here. The water is so nice in this pool, come swim with us.” 

“When you take care of the people you have, you'll never have to worry about getting the people you need.” - Ken Coleman, America’s Career Coach and Ramsey Personality talking on the alphalist CTO podcast episode 56.

How do you do it? I poured over the largest study that Gallup or anybody has ever done on employee engagement. I looked at all the results and I came up with what I believe are six leadership rules for leaders like yourself.  They're very simple -but if you institute them and lead this way with your people, then retention is going to increase and you see greater productivity and therefore greater profitability.

What worked when your company was founded will no longer work now that you are scaling and hiring at a rapid pace. How will people communicate? How will tech debt be tackled? The choices one engineer makes affect many more people so now it's time for you to strategize on how your increased workforce works together.  Rachel tackled many scaling challenges when the team she led grew threefold - to 500 people! This is what she shared on the alphalist CTO podcast on how she had to adapt as the team grew.

20 years ago, there was a clear difference between being at home and being at work. You focussed on your personal life at home and your work only at work. Nowadays, technology has allowed us the flexibility to work from wherever, but it also meant the boundaries between work and life have been blurred -  taking work/life balance with it.  And it isn’t just our personal life that is suffering, our work life is suffering too. Deep focus is extremely important in the tech world and it can’t happen when a person is ‘semi-working’ - checking in on work when they are able to focus on it and when they are at work, they get pinged on other things. Some might blame technology - especially Slack for pulling us into work when we are meant to be relaxing. Or perhaps distracting us from the task at home. Yet, in a recent CTO podcast, Cal Henderson suggested that perhaps it is more of a cultural issue, than a technological one. It is up to us to choose how to structure our working lives and our personal lives. In this blog post, we will discuss key takeaways from the CTO podcast featuring Cal, the CTO of Slack. After all, it  is increasingly important to define those boundaries and be able to disconnect outside of working hours. Setting boundaries is also important for productivity as there are periods when you want to do deep work and stay focused and other moments when you are open for collaboration.

How can CTOs assess a candidate's skill? This is a huge part of technical recruiting as CTOs want to filter for the best candidates with the least amount of time and effort for both parties. Does one do Live Coding or a take-home assessment? Perhaps one should stick to whiteboard problem solving or have the candidate analyze a PR? Some even argue that in today’s market - we should skip challenges entirely! Here is the rundown!

Technical Recruiting is tough these days. Salaries are ballooning and the race to secure top talent is on. Snir Yarom, CTO of Codility, shares how you can improve your recruiting and hiring process by tapping into data throughout the hiring funnel.

APIs are running the world and powering most of our digital experiences spanning from banking to entertainment. Ten years ago, it was not so apparent. But once the Facebook API and Google API emerged, the scene was set. Marco Palladino has been on the forefront of the API scene from the beginning. He first founded an API Marketplace called Mashape before going on to found Kong, which provides middleware for APIs. He shares with us his thoughts on API and advises us on what to consider when building one.

Technical leaders such as CTOs and Engineering Managers need a strong peer network of others in similar roles in order to stay on top of their game. Luckily, nowadays a technical leader can join a variety of peer groups who are meeting online (e.g in Slack) or in person (e.g. events and local meetups). With the wealth of CTO networks available, it's hard to find which one is best suited for your needs.

What is it like to be the CTO of a remote startup? Kore Nordmann shares tips on how to lead a tech team from the benefits of pair programming to instructions on how to set up a virtual office for remote interaction. 

Missing out on great applicants costs money. Which is why you want to cast the widest net and also reel them in record time before they go somewhere else!

Top talent who are searching for a job today will get multiple offers tomorrow. You need to streamline your hiring, understand what you're searching for and you need to come to the candidates on time with the right feedback. Right now, SmartRecuriters is working on shortening the recruitment cycle for Engineers from 5 to 2.5 weeks. Their CTO, Alesia Braga, shares with us what they are doing to achieve this plus insight into the world of recruiting which she has gained as the CTO of an enterprise level end-to-end recruiting solution.

Read on to learn how to hire top talent through shortening recruitment time and applying DEI best practices. 

What makes a great internal culture at a tech company? Mark Porter is now the CTO of MongoDB - yet over the past 40 years, he has worked at companies like Oracle, Amazon Web Services, NASA, and Grab.  In this article, you will learn insights that Mark has gained over the past 30+ years working at a variety of companies about creating a great internal work culture -  from hierarchies and diversity initiatives to metrics and mentorships.

Securing apps is vitally important. Your users are trusting you with their data and transactions and you can’t afford to betray that trust. Worst yet, you yourself can’t go down due to malicious actors. You need to make sure your process secures your app from the frontend to the backend and everything in between.

Few recognise the importance of app security more than Andreas Schranzhofer, the CTO of Scalable Capital. Scalable Capital is a Neo-Broker and robo-advisor based in Munich with over 250 million in funding. Scalable Capital is responsible for the security of a system with great financial implications and Andreas uses his  highly ‘hardware- near’ background in electrical engineering, digital signal processing, and embedded systems to ensure app security. 

He shared with us on the alphalist podcast how to secure an app and this is what we learnt:

Charity Majors tests in production. And is proud of it. In this article Charity shares with us why she believes in testing in production and how to do it right using the current tools and observability.

CTOs are responsible for providing whatever your company needs from a technical standpoint. What is the ‘one job’ of a CTO? There is no clear-cut role because every company: some CTOs are dealing with deep architecture, others (like Charity Majors) with evangelism. Charity’s evangelism takes a variety of forms as she believes the success of Honeycomb relies on people writing better code so, on top of explaining observability, she also helps people write better code- on Twitter and her blog. 

‘PagerDuty raises 90 million to wake up more engineers in the middle of the night.’ read a recent headline. Highlighting both the recent funding and also its unpopular but necessary job. However, Alex Solomon of PagerDuty is working on making the DevOps world more efficient with on-call-management, AIOps, and automating routine debugging tasks.  In this episode of the alphalist.CTO podcast, Alex shares with us the importance of on-call management, the future of DevOps, and why we need AIOps to take the pain out of DevOps.

Find out about the importance of Developer Advocacy, how Edge Computing is the next frontier in Cloud Native, why Kubernetes are not for everyone, and why End-User companies should contribute to the Open Source. Featuring Cheryl Hung of Cloud Native Computing Foundation, get expert enlightenment on Kubernetes from someone who heads a 600 member strong Open Source Community Ecosystem.

As the CTO of UBIRCH, Matthias Jugel spent the past few weeks getting the German vaccine passes ready. He followed EU protocols to create an authenticated system. His real specialty is in using crypto and blockchain for verification purposes such as tickets, manufacturing, self-sovereign identities, and more. Find out about the uses of blockchain and its future in this comprehensive article on the topic

As tools, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have become intertwined with most people's everyday lives. Available research confirms this: AI comes inbuilt in 77% of the devices we use today. In a conversation with Tobi, Rasmus Rothe, the founder of Merantix, a Berlin-based AI company builder, shares his take on the AI and machine learning trends to keep tabs on in 2021

Across the globe, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted work all through 2020. As a result, millions lost their jobs and were furloughed, while others were forced to adjust to a work-from-home setup as their offices closed abruptly. Since, the world has largely adapted to the new normal even as uncertainty persists regarding the future of work. Questions linger on the long term impact of the pandemic.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic permanently appended the way we work? For companies that choose to embrace remote work, how do they do it right even after the stressors of the pandemic have disappeared? In a conversation with Tobias, GitLab CTO Eric Johnson offers 10 tips to help your business thrive while embracing WFH arrangements.

What comes to mind when you think of sharing a ride with a talkative person? Quiet person? Your preference for companionship will dictate who you would most enjoy sharing a ride with. Enter BlaBlaCar —the world's leading carpooling company based in France.

BlaBla car is a ridesharing platform that allows you to choose your companions based on conversation preference.  In your user profile, you specify, "Bla" for a calm drive, "bla bla" for a moderate level of conversation and "bla bla bla" if you want to chat the entire duration of the trip. Hence the name BlaBlaCar.

Since its inception over 15 years ago, the ride-sharing platform has undergone several corporate developments, including 12 acquisitions, expansion in 22 countries with over 100 million users. It has secured over $400 million in funding. How did the company achieve all these milestones?

In this podcast, Tobias chats with Olivier Bonnet, the CTO of BlaBlaCar, about the strategy behind BlaBlaCar. The pair also discusses the company's short-term and long-term roadmaps, the complexity of route planning, and how writing helps associates at BlaBlaCar structure their thoughts.

John Graham-Cumming, or JGC, is the CTO of Cloudflare, an American company that provides CDN solutions, Cyber security services, DDoS mitigation, and distributed DNS services. He was there from the very beginning when the company had only 24 people to today where its personnel is approaching 2,000.

In this podcast, Tobi chats with JGC about his GNU Make book, how Cloudflare has grown to a market cap of $25BN, what he thinks about edge computing, how Covid-19 has changed the security world, and how Cloudflare operates and maintains a global network with millions of servers.

Mitchell Hashimoto started his nerd path when he was just 12 years old, teaching himself some basic programming concepts. He then pursued computer science at the college level before getting his first job at Ruby as a junior engineer, which helped kick off his passion for infrastructure automation.

Now, Mitchell is the CTO and co-founder of HashiCorp, a software company with the most widely used multi-cloud infrastructure automation products globally—including Terraform, Vagrant, Vault, Consul, and Nomad.

In this podcast, Tobi speaks with Mitchell about how HashiCorp has grown, from a team of less than 15 to over 1000 employees in under ten years. He also shares with Tobi the secret sauce for building successful open source projects, where to draw the line in open core businesses, and how to prevent cloud providers from sucking your blood. Mitchell also talks about how he balances between growing his company and being an active Github user.

Jean-Denis Greze is the CTO at Plaid; a U.S.-based financial services company considered a unicorn in the FinTech space. He is a computer science graduate who worked in the tech-world during the first internet bubble before deciding to change career paths and study law. How did he end up in the fintech industry?

“Shopify is running. People run their business on it. So, we had no pause button. We couldn't go away for three years and come up with a better version and come back and show it off. We have to do it in-flight. But that's what we've done over the last 15 years.”

“I gave up on programming at six years old.”

That’s how David Heinemeier Hansson begins his story in this chat with Tobi that covered a range of topics, including how David discovered Ruby, why the 60-hour workweek is a stupid lie, and how he and Jason Fried have successfully managed Basecamp since 1999.

Matthias Laug is the CTO and co-founder of Tier Mobility, the fastest-growing micro-mobility company in the world. In this podcast, Tobi engages Matthias on what he sees on the horizon for the scooters’ space and his people-over-tech approach as a CTO, among other things. And of course, Tobi asks the judo brown belt owning CTO about his gone days of backflips.

During the summer of 2009, Matthias joined hands with Lieferando co-founders to develop code for Lieferando, a popular mobile app in Germany that people can use to order food from their favorite restaurants. Matthias says he figured that he could get done with the code within three months, so there was no need for him to quit college to get involved in the startup.

What started as a summer engagement became Matthias’ unofficial introduction into the startup world. He would then become the CTO at Lieferando, a position he held for seven years.

Johannes Schaback is the CTO at home24, the most popular furniture, and home accessories shopping platform in Europe. He has an impressive list of wins as a co-founder and business angel. In this podcast, he introduces himself by telling what he calls a very sad story of his journey into nerdism.

Ahti Heinlah went through his first computer programming Bootcamp when he was ten years old. This was back in 1982. His mother came home one day and decided to teach him how to program computers. In just a few days, he created his very first computer program. They didn’t have a computer at home, so they went to his mother’s workplace to run the program. It worked. The whole experience excited him and introduced him to the world of electronics engineering and computer programming.

In this podcast, Tobias engages Ahti on how he has managed to be successful in three different and complex areas at the same time: IoT, robotics, and AI. Ahti is the co-founder and current CTO of Starship Technologies, a company that’s doing groundbreaking work in robotics. Tobias talks to him about his formative years and his journey to becoming one of Estonia’s most respected founders.

In this podcast, Tobi engages Marty on his intriguing journey in the world of business, from his stint at Netscape to founding the Silicon Valley Product Group. His geek path goes back to when he was seven years old. His father-- the first Ph.D. in Computer Science in the United States-- introduced him to computer programming, which interested him enough for him to want to pursue it in college.

Tobias’ special guest in this podcast is Sergei Anikin, the CTO of Pipedrive. He engages him in a conversation on how to grow a SaaS company from a tech perspective. Pipedrive is a CRM designed for salespeople. Sergei has been in the software as a service space since 1996 when he got his first job as a developer. His software development jobs have always involved the internet. Before Pipedrive, he worked at Skype when it was owned by eBay and later when it was acquired by a private equity fund and then Microsoft.

In this podcast, Tobias engages Mikko Hypponen, a global security expert, perhaps best known for the Hypponen Law about IoT security. It states that whenever an appliance is described as being “smart”, it is vulnerable.

Sebastian Thrun is Stanford Professor, Google X founder, Udacity Founder, Kitty Hawk founder, won the DARPA challenge - I am thrilled he was may guest in the podcast

Peter Grosskopf studied Information Systems at the University of Münster. He had dreams of coding his way through the rest of his life, only to end up in the financial services industry. How did that happen? In this podcast, he chats with Tobias about this interesting transition and the remarkable impact he has made over the years, especially in Germany’s financial services industry.

As a young student, Eric Bowman had no interest in any kind of business-related activities. And certainly not leadership and management. His dream? He wanted to become a physicist.

“An academic lifestyle was kind of perfect for me,” so he thought.

As the Senior Vice President of engineering at TomTom, Berlin, he supervises over 2,000 engineers. That’s quite a transition for someone unwilling to take up the challenge of leadership.

In this podcast, Tobi interviews Eric, discussing the critical milestones in his career, including how he ‘cheated’ his way through an interview at Maxis after reading a book he purchased on Amazon in 1995.

He also sheds some light on his belief that: “three good programmers can change the world.”