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 were building better technology organizations.

And they were still screwed.

Let me tell you three stories that kept me up at night.

Story One: The Fractional CTO Who Delivered Everything (Except What Mattered)

I was texting with Courtney Han. He'd been working as a fractional CTO, and his CEO just asked him to reduce his rate because of financial issues.

I asked him: "Did you deliver value?"

His response killed me:

"Got the AI app out. Got key integrations to close sales pipeline. Cut noise between product and engineering. Set up dedicated teams for SaaS and PaaS products. But the above has contributed minimally to revenue. And that is killing me."

That text haunted me. Here's a brilliant CTO who did everything right from a technology perspective and still couldn't answer the only question that actually mattered to his CEO.

Story Two: The Q4 Planning Meeting From Hell

A company asked me to help plan their Q4 initiatives. No CTO, but they had a dev manager and product manager.

I asked the dev manager about his plans. He rattled off the usual: increase test coverage, upgrade infrastructure, add integrations. Solid technical work.

Asked the product manager. More customer interviews, Figma mockups, feature improvements. Also reasonable.

Then I asked the CEO what the company needed: "20% increase in adoption of our SaaS product."

I didn't see how anything the dev and product folks mentioned would get them there.

So I asked to see their pro forma budget. (I'm not a finance guy, so I was honestly just following my gut here, hoping I'd sound intelligent.)

Turns out they needed to go from $20K to $40K MRR.

I asked the product manager: "How are we getting to $40K?"

"I don't know if that $20K is even from this SaaS product."

They didn't have analytics. No Amplitude. No Mixpanel. Just some Firebase integration the dev manager mentioned.

Think about that. The company was about to fund a quarter of product engineering work that had zero connection to the one thing the business actually needed.

Story Three: The Revenue Shortfall Nobody Saw Coming

I was fractional CTO for another company. Asked the CEO about their three-year revenue goal.

"$10 million ARR."

They were at $3 million. Just hired a sales and marketing person.

I did the math. Even if sales and marketing performed perfectly, they'd have a $500K shortfall in year one. That compounds.

"All things being equal, we're not hitting $10 million if the product just... exists. We need to do something measurable."

Stunned silence in the C-suite.

(Learn to enjoy those moments of stunned silence after you say something that lands. They're rare and beautiful.)

The Problem We're Not Talking About

Here's what I realized: We launched CTO Levels to help you build a technology organization. And it works. The framework is solid. People are leveling up.

But I kept seeing CTOs get red scores on one particular area: Product.

No matter how amazing your technology organization is, if the business doesn't understand what it's building, you're going nowhere.

Your ultimate edge isn't just building a technology organization.

Your ultimate edge is building a technology business.

Yeah, I can hear some of you: "But Etienne, we have CTO Levels! We're doing the framework! We're crushing it on deployment and infrastructure and MVPs!"

And you're still screwed if you can't connect any of that to whether your company runs out of money.

The Brutal Math

Let me remind you of something Kathy shared last year:

• 20% of startups fail in their first year
• 50% fail within five years
• 65% won't make it to 10 years

The number one reason? They run out of money.

You are likely CTOing at a company that doesn't understand its financials. That's the game we're playing.

From Tech-Driven to Business-Driven

I see a lot of CTO influencers on LinkedIn saying "I'm product-driven! I'm product-driven!"

That's cute.

I want to float something different: Be business-driven.

Not tech-driven. Not product-driven. Business-driven.

Stay wildly fanatical about technology and AI and whatever comes next. But as a CTO? You need to grasp the business growth engine. Not just use it. Not just support it. Grasp it.

What is the growth engine you're betting your time, career, and intellect on?

Most CTOs can't answer that question.

Introducing CTO Core

I've been obsessing over a financial framework for CTOs. Not because I love finance (I don't), but because I'm tired of watching brilliant technical leaders fail at understanding their businesses.

I call it CTO Core.

It's four words you need burned into your brain:

• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
• OpEx (Operating Expenses)
• Revenues
• Earnings

Say it with me: COGS, OpEx, Revenues, Earnings.

Yeah, I know. Basic finance. But here's the thing: Most CTOs don't think about their work through this lens.

Connecting Your Work to Business Reality

Remember the four emergent properties of a healthy technology organization? Speed, Stretch, Shield, Sales?

Here's how they map to Core:

Speed loves COGS: Track your COGS-to-speed ratio. How much are you spending to deliver how fast? Higher COGS with faster delivery means you're productive. Higher COGS with slower delivery means you made an infrastructure investment. Either way, now you can explain it.

Stretch loves OpEx: Return on operating expense. You're making investments in growing your organization. Can you show that those investments generate profit? This is how you justify hiring that senior engineer.

Shield loves Revenues: Here's the big one that nobody talks about. How much of your revenue is at risk right now? Not "what new features will we build?" but "what happens if we ignore cybersecurity? Regulatory compliance? System downtime?"

CEOs talk about growing from $10M to $12M to $15M like it's automatic. But nobody's asking: How are we protecting the $10M we already have?

Sales loves Earnings: Gross profit margin. Simple. Are we generating more revenue without increasing costs so much that our margin tanks?

The Shift That Changes Everything

Walk into your next strategy meeting with these four numbers. Track them over time. Connect your technical decisions to their business impact.

You'll become the voice of reality.

Not the voice of "we need to refactor the codebase."

Not the voice of "we need more engineers."

The voice that says: "If we don't spend $1M on compliance, we risk losing $4M in revenue."

That's a conversation CEOs understand.

Why This Actually Matters Now

With AI coming for everything, being business-driven isn't just smart. It's survival.

Technology is getting easier. Building is getting faster. The technical moat is shrinking.

But understanding the business? Connecting technology decisions to financial outcomes? Speaking the language of growth engines and risk and margin?

That's the edge that won't get automated away.

The Challenge

I'm not saying abandon technical excellence. I'm saying technical excellence without business acuity is a recipe for the "I'm screwed" mentality we all know too well.

Next time you're in a meeting and someone's talking about Q4 initiatives or three-year plans or that new feature the CEO wants, ask yourself:

Can I quantify how this connects to COGS, OpEx, Revenues, or Earnings?

If you can't, you're building in the dark.

If you can, you're building a business.

Want to go deeper on this? I'm holding a webinar where we'll dig into these metrics and how to actually use them without becoming a finance nerd. Because let's be honest, you still want to build cool shit. You just want to build cool shit that doesn't get you fired when the company runs out of money.

This is the edge brilliant technical leaders need to become fulfilled business leaders. Not more technical skills. Business literacy that lets you protect what you're building.

That's what transforms a CTO from someone executing a vision to someone who can actually shape it.