Ep 21: Carlos Paniagua
on the role of a CTO in a startup that has raised $107 M, ease of doing business in Estonia & revolutionizing digital customer service in USA
Carlos Paniagua is the co-founder and CTO of Glia - one of the leading digital customer service providers that to date has raised $107 million in VC investment. Coming from Guatemala originally, Carlos has spent a third of his life in Estonia, where he also resides currently and runs the technical team of Glia, while his co-founders and the rest of the team are based in the US
In this episode, Carlos shares his experience in running a US-Estonian organization in terms of operations and fundraising. We also have an in-depth discussion on the realities and challenges of a startup CTO as well as a look into the role of digital channels for sales and customer service in the pandemic era
CLICK one of the links below to listen to the episode
The topics covered in this episode (with Timestamps)
🔈 [03:35] Digital communication in customer service
The impact of the pandemic on customer service
Digital sales and support channels becoming mission-critical for most businesses
🔈 [09:45] Being based in Estonia and the US, operations, and fundraising
Choosing Estonia for engineering talent
Advantages of the time zone difference
Establishing enough overlap in work hours between offices
Communication and socializing information that is important
Ease of relocating to Estonia
Living, working, and running a company in Estonia as a foreigner
Hiring abroad vs. relocating
What VCs look for from the technical perspective
Making sure the licensing is figured out throughout your whole tech stack
Considerations in picking VCs to back you
The value that VCs bring for the tech side of the business
The mechanics of the technical due diligence process
Making past and future tech decisions digestible for investors
Presenting a US-Estonian company to investors
🔈 [34:10] The role and reality of being a CTO in a fast-growing company
Practical involvement of the CTO in various parts of the business (product, sales, engineering)
Choosing fundamental priorities in development to drive all product decisions
How to determine if you want/can be a CTO
Implementing team onboarding practices
Scaling the team
Planning of development process and managing expectations
Product education for customers
Making feature decisions from customer feedback
Prioritization in the development process
Being a technical founder of a startup without significant prior work experience
Competing for tech talent
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