Etienne de Bruin

Etienne de Bruin

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What a Room Full of Landscapers Taught Me About My Own Leadership Failures

What a Room Full of Landscapers Taught Me About My Own Leadership Failures

In September of 2025, I stood in front of 120+ landscaper owner-operators to talk about technology adoption. Me – the CTO who builds software for a living – teaching contractors about getting their crews to use apps. The irony wasn't lost on me. Halfway through my talk, as I watched

The Day I Realized I Was Fighting the Wrong Battle

The Day I Realized I Was Fighting the Wrong Battle

I was debugging a production issue at 2 AM when it hit me. Not the solution to the bug. That came 20 minutes later. What hit me was this: I was using my Superior-level intellect (yeah, I got tested) to solve problems that shouldn't exist in the first

The Hardest Refactor You'll Ever Do

The Hardest Refactor You'll Ever Do

I had a conversation with Adam Horner recently that took me back to one of the most painful moments of my career. In 2008, My co-founder pulled me aside and said, "You know you have to stop coding, right?"

Relearning the Song: Why Your CTO Playbook Keeps Expiring

Relearning the Song: Why Your CTO Playbook Keeps Expiring

I was what felt like hours into my a conversation with Joel Beasley when he dropped something that made me stop mid-sentence. "You gotta relearn the song," he said. He was talking about John Mayer having to constantly relearn his own songs because you can only keep so

The Meaning We Make: How Entrepreneurs Create Problems That Don't Exist

The Meaning We Make: How Entrepreneurs Create Problems That Don't Exist

I'm sitting across from my co-founder at our weekly strategy meeting, both of us focused on our laptops rather than each other. The silence between us isn't the comfortable, productive kind—it's tense, loaded with unspoken frustrations. We've been like this for

The Hero CTO Syndrome: Why Saving Everyone Hurts Everyone

The Hero CTO Syndrome: Why Saving Everyone Hurts Everyone

When Your Hero's Cape Becomes Too Heavy I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop, reviewing notes from recent coaching calls. The espresso machine hisses in the background as I scroll through my observations about Jacob, a talented CTO I helped place at a promising SaaS startup

Your Technology Organization is Brilliant. Your Business is Failing. Here's Why.

Your Technology Organization is Brilliant. Your Business is Failing. Here's Why.

Two years ago, I stood on stage at our 0111 Conference and introduced the CTO Levels framework. We'd been doing hundreds of assessments by then, and the framework was working. CTOs were finally seeing the complexity of their role laid out in a way that made sense. They

Feb 9th, 2024

I want to remember this date, because it's the day etienneX was born. In the mountains of Mammoth. Etienne explores.

Your CTO Should Be Spending Your Money (And 9 Other Things You're Not Getting)

Your CTO Should Be Spending Your Money (And 9 Other Things You're Not Getting)

When it comes to our technology—the thing our entire business is built on—we have this bizarre, almost dysfunctional relationship.

The CTO Role Is Not Technical (And Watching 80 CTOs Realize This in Real-Time)

The CTO Role Is Not Technical (And Watching 80 CTOs Realize This in Real-Time)

I asked a room full of CTOs to agree with something before they saw it. About 37% raised their hands. The rest stared at me like I'd just asked them to deploy to production on a Friday afternoon. Then I showed them the slide: The role of CTO

Tech Tetris: The Framework That Stops You From Building The Wrong Thing

Tech Tetris: The Framework That Stops You From Building The Wrong Thing

You know that feeling in your gut? The one that wakes you up at 3am wondering if you're building your tech organization all wrong? I stood in front of 200 founders at SaaS Academy in San Diego, and when I asked who had concerns about their dev team&

When the Best Technical Minds Can't Fix Themselves

When the Best Technical Minds Can't Fix Themselves

I sat down with Joel Beasley on the Modern CTO podcast last week, and within the first ten minutes, we were talking about people throwing things in meetings. Not metaphorically. Actually throwing things. Joel had this reaction - this beautiful, incredulous "What type of meetings do you have?"