Startup Phases For CTOs, Stephan Schmidt, 2025

In Startup Phases For CTOs, Stephan Schmidt outlines the core phases startups go through and what CTOs should focus on in each: ideation (generate ideas, talk to potential customers, resist coding and building castles in the sky), prototype (sell early, sell often), MVP (make something people want, start from scratch, stick with mainstream frameworks), PMF (B2B: sales can sell without huge rebates or free software development; 90% onboarding is configuration, not development), traction, hyper growth (replace things that might break, break up modulith into microservices, focus on security, monitoring, observability), and cash cow (focus on costs and margins).

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Match your approach to your company phase: explorers, villagers, town planners. Explorers go into the unknown and discover new places—they work on new things that don’t exist yet. Villagers go where explorers have gone—they take an MVP or product after PMF and scale it. Town planners make it right—they ensure every house has electricity, sewage, roads, fiber optics, street signs, traffic lights, crosswalks. On your company phase, do the right things. When scaling, think like a villager, don’t think like a town planner. When pre-PMF, think like an explorer. Hiring the right people for the phase.

2. For B2B companies, you’ve reached PMF when sales can sell the product to companies without huge rebates and without free software development (customization). When all needed to onboard 90% of customers is configuration, not development, you’ve reached PMF. Grow the product from the framework you used to a decoupled modulith (monolith with modules and internal APIs) so more people can work on different parts. As an engineering manager, start thinking about a technology vision and strategy.

3. Greiner Growth Curve: companies experience periods of steady evolution followed by revolutionary crises. Phase 1: Creativity—The Leadership Crisis (step into clear leadership, set priorities, establish engineering rituals). Phase 2: Direction—The Autonomy Crisis (decisions must move downwards, shift towards empowering teams). Phase 3: Delegation—The Control Crisis (introduce platform mindset and strategy, build dedicated platform teams, create “paved roads”). Phase 4: Coordination—The Red-Tape Crisis (invest in “team APIs”—clear interfaces defining how teams interact). Phase 5: Collaboration—The Growth Crisis (cultivate communities of practice, rotate key technical personnel, maintain transparency at scale).

Why and when to read it:

Read this when you’re a CTO or engineering leader at a startup and want to understand what to focus on in each phase. It’s especially valuable for technical founders, CTOs, or engineering managers navigating company growth. The book provides clear guidance on technology choices, team structure, and leadership focus for each startup phase, making it perfect for anyone feeling overwhelmed by growth or unsure what to prioritize next.