CTO's job is delivering business outcomes
According to a panelist on the *SaaStr Podcast*, a CTO's primary role is not shipping code but delivering business results. The speaker stated, “Your ultimate job isn’t shipping code—it’s delivering business outcomes. The board wants to know how technology drives revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction.” This aligns with a broader trend of the CTO role evolving into a strategic business partner.
- A key part of a CTO's technical due diligence in an M&A context is assessing the target company's architecture, infrastructure, and cybersecurity posture to identify risks related to scalability, technical debt, and compliance with standards like GDPR. This process involves not just code review but also evaluating the engineering team's structure for key-person dependencies and cultural fit. - In programmatic advertising, the trend for 2026 is a move away from third-party cookies towards the use of first-party data and alternative identifiers. This shift is happening alongside a push for greater efficiency through Supply Path Optimization (SPO), which aims to create more direct and transparent routes to ad inventory, reducing costs and improving performance. - Enterprise adoption of AI is moving towards agentic workflows, where AI agents autonomously manage complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human oversight. Unlike traditional automation that follows fixed scripts, these AI agents can reason, adapt to new information, and make decisions, which is expected to significantly improve operational efficiency. - Creative automation is becoming a critical tool for marketing teams, using templates and data feeds to scale the production of personalized ad creatives. This technology streamlines repetitive design tasks, allowing for faster campaign iteration and testing without sacrificing brand consistency. - Horizontal SaaS platforms, which offer broad, industry-agnostic solutions for functions like HR or project management, are increasingly incorporating AI to provide cross-industry intelligence and orchestration of various AI capabilities. This contrasts with vertical SaaS, which focuses on the specific needs of a single industry. - The UK tech ecosystem saw significant investment in 2025, raising between $15.3 billion and $17.2 billion, positioning it as the second-highest funded country globally. London remains the dominant hub, with FinTech, AI, and B2B SaaS being the top-funded sectors. - In Formula 1, the 2026 season will introduce new technical regulations, including more powerful electrical systems and the use of 100% sustainable fuels, aimed at improving the sport's sustainability and relevance to the automotive industry. - Recent local news in London includes a major revamp planned for the Croydon shopping centre, and a man being jailed for his role in the deaths of 41 dogs at a "rehoming centre".
