The Formula For Evaluating Start-Ups with Sergey Sundukovskiy

If you were considering joining a start-up as their CTO would you have a formula to evaluate its potential? Our guest on today’s CTO Studio does and it stems from his years as a CTO, an advisor and mentor in the field. Sergey Sundukovskiy is the CTO, CPO, co-founder of Raken. He's also a mentor, advisor and father of three.  Sergey and I have a great conversation about the formula for evaluating start ups and how to manage and keep healthy development teams. Join us as we dive into those subjects and more on this episode of CTO Studio.  In this episode, you’ll hear: What is the benefit of being both CTO and CPO (Chief Product Officer)? What are the two sources for ideas? How has their product changed since its inception? Why compromise doesn't always work to solve disagreements. Should all CTOs mentor? And so much more!  We start with a discussion about Raken: what it is and who it serves. Raken is a field management solution. They serve the construction industry by helping supervisors and job foremen keep track of what is going on on the construction site. So often the people in charge realize there is a problem when the job is running behind schedule and off track, Raken helps avoid that scenario. Raken helps construction companies to keep the construction projects on time and on target through daily documentation and labor/project insights, as well as serving as a Worker Time Management app for payroll purposes. Sergey explains what it does in more detail: If you have ever been on a job construction site you know jobs are broken down into roughly 3 separate buckets. Prep time is one bucket, the second bucket is the actual build stage of the project and the last bucket is the transition stage when you are completing the project.  They primarily serve the building stage and the transition stage. In the building phase you need to be sure you are on time and things don't need to be adjusted. Basically Raken is project management software for the construction industry projects focused on field management tools. Normally, construction projects are driven by the management office in the office/field trailer and then what happens on the job site. The project gets conceived in the office and planned in the office. Raken's approach is to service the field. They serve the field workers so the field workers can keep track of activities, and to do so in a simple and easy-to-use manner. Raken helps Superintendents to document what is being done as it is being done, rather than having two hours they would normally have to use at the end of the day to make note of the progress on the job. Sergey says they are staying focused on the construction industry and not branching out right now. I was curious to know how Raken came about - where and how did he get the idea? He was a late stage co-founder for the company so the idea wasn't his. But in general ideas come from two different sources. The first is industry insiders who have been working in their field forever and eventually start their own business to do a particular thing in a better way. The second source is industry outsiders who see a better way to do something that others haven't seen. Their co-founder, Kyle, fell into the second category: he decided to create Raken after recognizing that the construction industry lacked a reporting tech solution that could alleviate major pain points. So Kyle set out to fix that with Raken. As a CTO with a rich history in software development, management leadership and previous CTO roles, how did Sergey know he wanted to join Raken?  He met Kyle about a year into his 2-year earnout from his previous company. At that point, Sergey knew he wanted to join another start up. He knew he had three choices: he could form his own start up, join an existi See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.