Carlos Paniagua is the co-founder and CTO of Glia - one of the leading digital customer service providers that to date has raised $107 million in VC investment. Coming from Guatemala originally, Carlos has spent a third of his life in Estonia, where he also resides currently and runs the technical team of Glia, while his co-founders and the rest of the team are based in the US. In this episode, Carlos shares his experience in running a US-Estonian organization in terms of operations and fundraising. We also have an in-depth discussion on the realities and challenges of a startup CTO as well as a look into the role of digital channels for sales and customer service in the pandemic era.The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps[03:35] - Digital communication in customer serviceThe impact of the pandemic on customer serviceDigital sales and support channels becoming mission-critical for most businesses[09:45] -Being based in Estonia and the US, operations, and fundraisingChoosing Estonia for engineering talentAdvantages of the time zone differenceEstablishing enough overlap in work hours between officesCommunication and socializing information that is importantEase of relocating to EstoniaLiving, working, and running a company in Estonia as a foreignerHiring abroad vs. relocatingWhat VCs look for from the technical perspectiveMaking sure the licensing is figured out throughout your whole tech stackConsiderations in picking VCs to back youThe value that VCs bring for the tech side of the businessThe mechanics of the technical due diligence processMaking past and future tech decisions digestible for investorsPresenting a US-Estonian company to investors[34:10] - The role and reality of being a CTO in a fast-growing companyPractical involvement of the CTO in various parts of the business (product, sales, engineering)Choosing fundamental priorities in development to drive all product decisionsHow to determine if you want/can be a CTOImplementing team onboarding practicesScaling the teamPlanning of development process and managing expectationsProduct education for customersMaking feature decisions from customer feedbackPrioritization in the development processBeing a technical founder of a startup without significant prior work experienceCompeting for tech talentFind out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/===See the video content exclusively on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/ Questions/suggestions? Join our Telegram group > https://t.me/pursuitofscrappiness Support the show

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