Johann Romefort from Seesmic

Startup Conversations – View from the CTO

Hey everyone, this is your host, Gonz, and welcome to the first episode of Startup Conversations: View from the CTO, a collaboration between Seedtable and Circle CI where we sit down with some of the greatest CTOs in Europe to deconstruct how the build and operate high-performing technology teams.

My guest today is Johann Romefort.

Johann is an investor, consultant and former CTO who specializes in Technical due diligence & corporate innovation.

Before becoming a freelance consultant, Johann worked as the Managing Director at Techstars for the BSH Future Home Accelerator and, before that — he co-founded Seesmic, a social media account management company, where he acted as CTO building a distributed team of 30+ developers. Seesmic was acquired by Hootsuite in August 2012.

So it’s no surprise that Johann is a gold mine of information and advice for any and all CTOs trying to innovate today. And in this conversation, we talk about it all:

• The frustrations that come with transitioning from coder to CTO
• Why CTOs should try to become coaches to their employees to exponentially increase their productivity
• Why tapping into your current network is the best way to recruit global, remote talent.
• What leading a disbrituted technical team of 30+ people looks like.
• Why leaders should lead with the example, starting with getting enough sleep.
• The importance of educating your entire team, CEO included, about the technical aspects of your company.
• And much, much more.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.