Behold, the CTO in Residence.

Do a quick search around the old interwebs, and you’ll quickly notice that studios are all searching for entrepreneurs to join the studio as residents. It almost feels more like a role within a studio than anything else; it has many shapes and forms. Naming isn’t even consistent, from plain EIR to EIRD to FIR to Future Founder, Startup Founder, and we can keep going for a while. It’s getting a bit messy, to be honest. As an entrepreneur and a true founder, why would I be attracted to this to begin with?

Redefining the Studio Residency

Digging into the different types of residency, there are clues in the finer print on what studios are actually looking for or aiming to achieve. Many of the roles just read like a job description with compensation to validate a business case and ultimately become one of the founders. And we’re not innocent in this case; we’ve made some, let’s say, less ideal versions of this.

Coming back to it sounding like a job isn’t that strange, all studios follow some sort of framework or route to success, and most have a set time to pull up the net to push, pivot, or kill. What does get me all wound up is when it becomes more of a program or part of a cohort. It doesn’t resonate at all with what I’ve come to believe as the empowering role of a studio at large.

99 Problems but timing ain’t one

So, what is a residency at a studio, or at least, what do we at Builders believe a residency to be At its core, we believe a studio exists to empower entrepreneurs to build stellar companies.

Because we’re building software companies, it’s way too easy to fall into the trap of building software first and looking for the problem later. So as you by now know, one should spend an insane amount of effort to understand ones customer and the problem one is aiming to solve. Even though I believe every sales call is a form of discovery throughout the entire lifespan of a company, most entrepreneurs did deep research and validation years ago, or maybe not even at all. The ones that did rarely touch the surface of what’s actually going on and get excited too soon to understand the intricacies and stories one layer deeper.

I will bet you that some of your early successes are more timing than anything else. And I believe this to be key to success: the understanding of a problem and validation of a product worth building can be codified. Timing the market… well, ehh, I guess not.

Empowering Entrepreneurs

So to empower the business founder, the most important thing a studio can do from the start is to guide a founder through this validation process while they steadily become subject matter experts by doing research and talking to dozens and sometimes over a hundred perceived customers and the experts around those customers. When done at a decent pace, this kickstarts a process of deep thinking, awakening the founder’s network, and the crafting of a beautiful solution.

In our case, we also shape a minimally viable company after validation, but for argument’s sake, the goal is to become so deeply embedded in the problem space that the only logical answer is to solve this painstaking problem and to better the world.

And you guessed it, to make this work, the studio’s superpower is a residency, in which the founder can thrive and build up that confidence in a great outcome. The studio goes through this process with founders many times a year and makes sure all contacts, tools, learnings are brought to the table while the founder keeps the momentum going. This is not a program, yes there are timelines, and preferred ways of work, but the outcome is a solution worth building with a confidence level which one normally gets from years of exploring markets.

Theres a flaw though… this residency is only for business founders.

The residency upgrade

But you know what?! The residency is incomplete. It’s broken. Because most studios are in tech we’re we validate a business case before writing (or co-pilot) a line of code. But after that, the first thing we’re getting from the risk side of things is the technical feasibility and prototyping of potential hero features. On top of that, we by now all understand that a technical co-founder is a critical part of any founding team. Well, until a short while ago, we would prototype with the studio core team and go on the hunt for a matching CTO.

It’s hard; as an engineer, I need more than just a platform to Tinder my way to meaning.

Here be dragons

For some reason, there are tons of places and resources out there focusing on finding a co-founder, but they’re better off naming it: founders with ideas looking for a CTO. It’s hard; as an engineer, I need more than just a platform to Tinder my way to meaning. A technical founder is looking for a great entrepreneur, with a relatable background story, who knows its market and has a grander, better vision for the space and, frankly, the world. Confidence levels need to be high, and the risk needs to be in the technical sphere so that I, the technical founder, can build a way out of there.

So when is a studio able to partner with a CTO? Most of the time, right before launching the company, because then it all becomes a bit clearer. In our case, 4–6 weeks before incorporation feels about right. Yep, that’s not a lot of time to get to know each other. And yes, we do compatibility psychometric tests and the 600-question exercise, but still, that has to be a sort of love at first sight.

Come to think of it, it feels like getting married in Vegas, could work but has California law… so… Is there a better way, a way where a studio can empower the technical founder in the same way as the business founder?

Behold, the CTO in Residence.

Wait, what? Another type of resident, really? Yes, bear with me. Most studios have a strict focus on a typical market; in our case, the future of work. We’ve spent time defining what that means to us and in what future we believe and invest in. Many technical founders and leaders identify with our mission to transform the daily grind into a joy for millions. If that’s true, then working on prototypes in that space is like walking into an all-you-can-eat candy store.

But like with all candy, its sugar rush doesn’t last forever, and the true underbelly gut feeling any founder has is wanting to become part of something bigger that changes the world.

And here comes the kicker, what if you as a CTO/technical founder can be at the place where other founders validate business cases all the time, and you’re surrounded by like-minded CTOs working on prototypes and deep dives into new technologies all day long? Don’t you think that the chances of meeting a founder that absolutely wants to build the future with you (and the other way around) gets a ton a lot bigger?

Well, we do.

Minimal Valuable Residency

That doesn’t mean we’ve figured this out already; we have many, many cycles of improvements on the business founder residency and not so many on this one. But we truly believe this solves the cold start problem for tech founders. At the same time, the business founders are challenged by the tech founders on their proposed solutions, creating a thriving atmosphere.

Does that mean that a match is forced? Nope. It means that a tech founder can work on the solutions they love, work with like-minded people, and get the opportunity to co-found a company if the stars are aligned. Aka, having a great time with the potential of the best after-party ever. Why haven’t we thought of this earlier…

So, this is also my invite to Lead Engineers and CTOs out there, feel that need to become part of something bigger? Hardcore hands-on? A residency at a studio might be the exact thing you’ve been looking for.

👉🏻 Check it out here.

Is this where the empowerment stops? Nope. The next step is building out into a community of CTOs and tech leaders. Not just to empower the founders we work with, stay tuned for that one ;).

What about ai ai ai?

Yes, yes, and yes. This also means that the studio collective understanding of everything large language model, machine learning, data, boilerplates, insights, market reach, network, etc., grows exponentially by the day. Not just for us, mostly because of and for the CTOs in residence.

Cheers. Your friends at Builders 🖖🏻