I'm Going ToMarket

It’s been about a month since I started as CTO at ToMarket and I’m excited to share a bit more about the company and what I’ll be doing…

Earlier in the summer I was chatting with a friend who consults with companies and startups. One company here in Denver caught my attention and I met with the founder and CEO a few times throughout the fall.

As we got to talking about the company, I was immediately impressed by what it does and where it’s headed. Our mission is “To unite the food industry with tools that empower passion”. And the vision and strategy so far have narrowed in on that. The product is already solving problems for chefs! Plus the technology behind it has a lot of potential to bring innovation and disruption to the industry.

I was excited to learn more about the kinds of problems in the food and beverage and hospitality industry and I was eager to be a part of it. So when the opportunity arose to join the company as the CTO I jumped at the chance.

In this new role, I lead a small offshore development team that’s helped us get to where we are today. And I’ll be helping get product roadmap dialed in, plan the next phases of growth and investment, as well as work on the technology roadmap. I’m excited to wear many hats as I help this team grow and realize even more of its potential. It’s a thrilling opportunity and I’m already enjoying the opportunity to shape the future for this company.

Not that this is a comprehensive roadmap for anyone, but here’s some of my activities in the first 30 days:

• create weekly 30-minute meetings with every member of the team, agenda and notes documents included
• gain access to all around various systems and review their usage, cost, user permissions
• migrate our sales contacts and other data to a new customer relationship management (CRM) system
• attempt some manual quality assurance for development stories to get familiar with the product, code, process
• re-configure some of our sprint planning routines (not too little, not too much but just enough process)
• co-lead roadmapping and prioritization for the coming year so we know everything on deck we want to do
• begin sizing the roadmap and projects and compare that to our current staffing and velocity
• inventory the various “tech debt” and chores we want to do, start chipping away at some where I can
• re-learn the hell that is dependency management (both Ruby gems and node packages)
• set some goals for myself and the team in the coming year to achieve technical excellence (security posture, SLAs, etc.)

As you can likely tell there’s a lot to do, lots of fun to be had, and plenty of opportunity for me to immediately contribute. But I also look forward to helping grow the team and level-up the company as we start fundraising and acquire more customers. I’m excited for 2023 and beyond!