My Story
"He leads by example and is always looking out for others success. Denis truly brings out the greatness in everyone!"
Meghan Foreman, Head of Customer Success, Porpoise.com
My chance came when I was offered the opportunity to help a Tech Startup that had a CTO who lacked experience. Taking on the role of Tech Director, I put in place a development process, along with a Product Owner and Scrum Master roles. I crafted a near-term tech innovation project backed by a government funding program. I hired on a tech lead and put in place a spending budget that reigned in runaway costs. All while maintaining the role of executive to ensuring business objectives were aligned with technology objectives. This included managing the entire team. Unfortunately, 3 months later COVID-19 hit. The company was crippled and my contract was cut short. What this showed me was that I had a framework for success and could help CTOs reproduce what I had done and take control of their role and help lead their company.
So, I took my proven model and created The Start-up CTO's handbook ™ as an instruction manual for new CTOs. Although I've been unofficially helping CTOs for years, it was the push I needed to make it official.
As I mention in any conversation with CTOs, whether or not we engage in a formal coaching contract, I offer to be part of their extended network. It takes a village to raise a startup, and as a startup community, we need to support each other. That’s how we’ll help each other make the impact we are in a privileged role to do.
"Once onboarded, you will instantly get organization, clarity, and order. We owe it a lot to Denis on how our engineering culture has been defined today, an essential to any startup maturing into cross departmental collaboration."
Hamed Al-Khabaz, CTO, Stay22.com
Is this how I could best help you?