Taking a Position as CTO of DealNation
I’ve been invited to join the team of DealNation as their CTO.
This is a very good fit in a lot of ways, most of all because it has me doing my magic in a way that lends rocket fuel to a big venture that’s already got a lot going for it.
In retrospect there are 3 things I would say I did very right to precipitate this opportunity:
- I set the bar for my performance very high from the very beginning. The first impression I made on the DealNation team was an act of remarkable ability, and I, with confidence bordering on arrogance, stated plainly then that that’s just how it goes with me. I’ve been delivering on that tall promise ever since.
- I gave them a taste of what it’s like to have me in house. When I offered the free day of me working with them side by side on my laptop, they got to experience the luxury of immediate communication to bounce around ideas, and the velocity at which development can get done when you sidestep the spec’ing/bidding/approving cycle of contract work1
- I shared with them a single-sheet write up of the value of me being their CTO. Drawing heavily from the coursework of Ramit Sethi’s Earn1K, I took the time to really articulate the how and why I could be of most value to DealNation in the CTO capacity. Then I unabashedly shared as much. Two months later, when the time was right, they came around to taking me up on that offer.
The path that we’ve taken together since January has us both clear that we’re a fantastic fit, and thus I’ve accepted the position and begin on July 11th. Exciting times ahead, I can hardly wait to weave more web dev magic into everything they (soon to be we) are doing.
Notes:
- I’ve been hired to come in a few days since, so even before being offered the position of CTO it was clear that this was a hit. ↩
Next: Knockout First Impressions
This is Programmer for Hire, a series of essays and explorations on the art of being a great programmer doing on-demand custom software development.