Studying Billionaires Is Inspiring. But Misleading!

Sergio Pereira

I am Sergio Pereira. I’ve been building technology for the last 15 years, and I’ve worked as a Startup CTO since 2014. I love Startups, and love to work with Founders to transform their promising business idea into a product shipped to fulfil that market opportunity, and then help them grow from a nimble operation into a fully fledged company aimed for scale. I’ve been a Startup CTO for 8 years, twice as a co-Founder. And I’ve worked with more than 10 startups as a Fractional CTO. For the last few years I've been focused on Fintech. I launched Income Share Agreements for the first time in Europe, and deployed a successful solution to alleviate the student debt burden in the US. As a Fractional CTO I’ve worked with companies in payments, lending APIs, KYC/AML funnels, NFTs and other Fintech use cases. I’ve also worked with startups in eCommerce, HR, Legal and other fields, despite my focus in Fintech. When it comes to technology I’m “stack agnostic”, as I’ve worked with multiple stacks (Javascript, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Solidity), cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Heroku) and tools. I usually evaluate the constraints and trade offs and decide on the best stack for each specific company context and situation. I’m very bullish on remote work. I have worked remotely since 2017, and have been building remote teams since then. Hiring and managing engineers is one of my specialties, and finding the best talent around the world became also a passion. Embracing a global talent pool has been a key competitive advantage for me as a Startup CTO, and I’ve evolved my async processes to make my teams more performant and inclusive. Some of my duties as a Startup CTO: Engage closely with Founders to understand the company’s business goals and priorities. Own tech roadmap, cost structure and discuss scope<>cost trade offs with Founders. Own recruiting. I source, interview, hire and onboard engineers, designers, data scientists, etc into my teams. Manage day to day tech delivery, from feature specs, to managing engineers and coordinating releases. Engage with external stakeholders (clients, partners, vendors, investors) as needed for due diligence, integrations, etc. Lead compliance and security, usually high stakes in the Fintech space