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PODCAST

The CTO Playbook

Join Adam Horner, a CTO with over 30 years in the tech industry, on The CTO Playbook — the podcast dedicated to helping CTOs excel. Perfect for CTOs and tech leaders navigating the complexities of their roles, each episode offers clear insights, innovative strategies, and practical advice from top leaders in tech. With Adam’s extensive experience mentoring engineers and tech leaders, and over a decade as a CTO, you’ll gain the tools and knowledge to build and refine your own CTO playbook. Whether

technology management

All Episodes

57:37

113: Anyone with an API key can copy your AI...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/10/06

AI adoption is getting easier for everyone. The harder question is whether you're using it to optimise the game you're already in, or to build a position that changes the game.Ritavan, author of The System Gambit and Data Impact, returns to The CTO Playbook after his first appearance on episode 30.A System Gambit is a deliberate sacrifice that builds a structural advantage that compounds. Rather than optimising within the system you're already in, it changes the system so competitors can't simply

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53:58

112: Your best managers are the most replaceable,...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/09/29

AI isn't just changing how engineers work. It's forcing technology leaders to rethink what makes management valuable.Prof. Charles Wood is Senior Manager, Data Science & AI at Comcast, where he has spent nearly a decade leading enterprise AI strategy, and the author of Artificial Intelligence Management. Most of the AI and jobs conversation focuses on developers. Charles looks at the layer above them. His argument is that the qualities that make a manager good, like consistency, fairness and a

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53:35

111: Every technology decision you make now is a...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/09/22

Quantum computing may not be breaking your security today, but the decisions you make now could determine how exposed your organization is when it does. Conor Deegan explains why CTOs need to start preparing before Q Day arrives.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com, the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.My guest this week is Conor Deegan, a security engineer,

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42:38

110: AI Compressed the Work That Built Your Judgment

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/09/14

Twenty years at one company should have made my guest predictable, and that is exactly the trap he built a method to escape.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Krystian Kolondra runs the browser portfolio at Opera, a set of products used by more than 300 million people, and he has spent two decades watching what happens to

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57:51

109: Your Agents Are Held to a Lower Standard Than...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/09/07

Most CTOs think adopting AI means picking the right tools, but Sumeet argues the real work is closing the accountability gap between agents and engineers.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.My guest this week is Sumeet Vaidya, co-founder and CEO of Crafting, who spent years at Facebook, Uber, and Discord before building the

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49:46

108: Your Most Valuable Executive Relationship Is the...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/08/31

Ask a CTO which executive relationship matters most, and they'll name the CEO, but my guest today would send you to the CFO instead.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Anoop Tripathi is 32 years into a career that spans from writing firmware for telephone exchanges to sitting as CTO at Sauce Labs, and he's unusually direct about

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24:45

107: The Controlled Re-Entry: A CTO Playbook for...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/08/24

I nearly turned my own summer into the cautionary tale. The thing that saved me was a last-minute week in the Swedish mountains.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.I came home with a small number of clear thoughts about my business that I couldn't have produced at my desk, and they fade fast once you're back. This episode is for

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22:33

106: Trust, temper, override: managing the AI you...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/07/27

One CTO spent two weeks tearing frontier models out and ended up back where they started. Another spent a few days building a tested escape route for what actually mattered.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.The safe CTOs aren't the ones who trust their AI provider, and they aren't the ones tearing frontier models out of every

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45:38

105: The CTO's real job when agents write the code...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/07/20

A founder went from zero to $10 million ARR in six months with six engineers and fifty agents, and the gap between idea and shipped feature was nine hours.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Most CTOs think going deeper on the tech is how they win this AI wave. My guest this week thinks that instinct is working against them.Nat

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22:48

104: Why the Best CTOs Filter the Firehose Instead of...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/07/13

Shielding your team from context isn't protection, it's a subtle underestimation of the people you hired for their judgment.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.The thing most technical leaders are proudest of is the same thing slowly cracking them in half. I coach CTOs through this exact pattern, and the reaction is almost always

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49:41

103: What CTOs Miss Before an M&A Deal Hits

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/07/06

Most CTOs chase value creation. Jaco Vermeulen says the real job is preserving it first.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Boards across the mid-market are running AI pilots that return nothing, and revenue is being booked long before it's ever realised. The gap between the story a business tells about itself and what's

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46:42

102: AI Transformation Starts With What You Don't...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/06/29

Duri's father holds more than 100 patents, filed his latest one at 96, and gave him a one-line philosophy that now drives how his teams approach every problem: most people don't try.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Most CTOs think AI failures are technical problems. The data says otherwise, and the gap between a good idea and

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36:52

101: Why Most Leadership Assessments Are Measuring...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/06/22

What if the biggest constraint on your organisation isn't your tech, your funding, or your market, but whether your leaders can think at the level the problem requires?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Logan Yonavjak spent nearly two decades in impact investing before co-founding Readiness Engine. Her perspective matters here

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22:23

100: Why AI Is Quietly Draining Your Senior Engineer...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/06/15

The reps that used to turn juniors into seniors are disappearing, and most engineering leaders won't notice until the senior shortage hits in three years.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Your dashboards say velocity is up, your seniors are asking careful questions nobody wants to answer, and your juniors are getting confident

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58:28

99: Why Transformations Die Just Before They Succeed

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/06/08

The most dangerous moment in a transformation isn't the start, it's the stretch right before behaviours actually start sticking.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.My guest is Anders Wengelin, partner at Friktion in Malmö, who spends his weeks inside large Swedish healthcare organizations trying to help them build new core

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47:46

98: The Office of the CTO at RevenueCat, with Miguel...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/06/01

When do you stop being the CTO with all the answers and start being the one who asks better questions?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Miguel Carranza built RevenueCat into critical infrastructure for thousands of mobile apps, and he'll tell you straight that he never wanted to be a manager.He got his first computer at age

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46:45

97: Stop Hiring More of the Same — Michelle McDaid,...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/05/25

Women weren't pushed out of tech once. There were multiple waves, and the patterns are still showing up in how teams get built today.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Most engineering leaders think their hiring process is neutral. Changing the job spec brought my guest three women applicants the following week, and her team

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41:40

96: Why the Best CTOs Don't Have a Playbook — Ric...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/05/18

Most CTOs are promoted for technical judgment, then get stuck trying to lead people with the same playbook that got them there.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Ric Hill has spent 14 years running Ghyston with his wife, CTO'd for startups and mid-corporates, and earned a spot on the CTO Craft 100. His central conviction is that

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1:09:26

95: The Leadership Signals CTOs Send Without...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/05/11

What if the biggest impact you have as a leader isn’t the strategy you set, but the signals you leave behind in every interaction?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.In this episode, Paul Kinkaid, a former British Army officer, founder of Forensic Outcomes, and executive leadership coach, introduces a principle from forensic

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44:10

94: Execution Beats Strategy? Rethinking the CTO Role...

The CTO Playbook ·

2026/05/04

What happens when execution matters more than strategy?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Adam Spector is a four-time founder and investor in over 200 startups. He has seen firsthand how quickly expectations have shifted, and why what worked even a few years ago no longer holds up. The bar for startups has moved. Companies that

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113 results

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