From Novice to CTO: A Startup Journey

In Episode 567, Rob Walling chats with Don Pottinger about joining a company as a developer, transitioning to CTO within 6 months, buying the company for $1, and then later on selling it for a life-changing sum of money.

The topics we cover

[1:13] Introductions

[4:08] Learning to code independently vs learning on the job

[06:38] Joining Kevy in 2014

[8:00] Transitioning to Director of Engineering and then to CTO

[11:58] Difficulty of laying employees off

[14:20] A new CEO and $0 MRR

[16:08] Cap table difficulties

[19:56] CEO departure and buying the company for $1

[26:30] Starting over and doing it solo

[29:01] Running as a lifestyle business and selling the company

[35:02] Launching a new startup

Links from the show

• Kevy
• Langua Talk
• Don Pottinger (@donpottinger) | Twitter

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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