What’s a CTO vs. VP Engineering?

The difference has a meaningful impact on your startup

DEV.BIZ.OPS
6 min readOct 14, 2021

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I attended my first live, in-person conference in 18 months this week, SaaStr Annual 2021. I was on the fence about attending such a large gathering. On one hand, it’s an event that brings the best and most accomplished leaders in the SaaS industry together to share actionable advice and practical tips on how they found success. On the other hand, catching COVID would suck.

For all the concerns, I have to applaud the SaaStr team for putting on a safe event. The entire conference was outside in open air tents and structures. Everyone had to show proof of vaccination, provide a negative COVID test result, and get temperature checked in the morning.

The conference itself was outstanding in terms of content and networking. I connected with people I have not seen in over two years, people that I only knew virtually, and many new folks that were eager to share and collaborate. Though I did not get to as many talks as I had wanted, those that I did attend were thought-provoking and had valuable practical insights.

David Sacks talk at SaaStr.

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DEV.BIZ.OPS

Thoughts on developers, digital transformation, startups, community building & engineering culture. Author is Mark Birch @ AWS 👉 https://twitter.com/marksbirch