Cracking the code: How to coach founders who were developers

As a founder coach, it can be all too easy to lump all founders together in one big bucket.?

But founders are not a monolith. There are many paths to becoming a founder, and people come to the role from a diverse range of backgrounds.?

By breaking them down into archetypes, coaches can tailor the support for each individual founder according to their needs, skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

One common founder (or co-founder) route is the developer-turned-CTO-or-CEO. These are folks who have deep technical knowledge and are often the driving force behind the initial product or technology of a startup.?

Perhaps more than any other founder archetype, they are visionaries shaping the future of technology, and their journey from coding to leadership allows them to guide the startup from its inception through various stages of growth.?

As they transition into the role of CTO or CEO, their responsibilities expand beyond the technical to include strategic decision-making, team building, fundraising, and shaping the company culture—all while maintaining a connection to the product and tech that started it all.

This shift can be quite a shock to founders who were previously used to working in homogeneous teams of fellow developers, disciplined sprint-focused work, regular standups, Slack-based messaging, and internal focus.

Their technical experience is invaluable—however, it also means that newly minted developer-founders have some ingrained rules and work habits that can be both helpful and harmful.?

So, how can a coach help them? Let’s explore six potential strategies.?

1. Create space

Developer founders may have a tendency to expect almost instantaneous responses, which makes it hard for them to create the time and space for thinking and planning, at least during work hours.?

It can also disrupt team focus if team members feel they have to always be on call.?

Coaches can help create that space by inviting founders to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

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2. Responding vs. controlling

Often, as a developer, workflows are set according to other people’s agendas and timings, such as customers and internal stakeholders (particularly if you have a CEO who changes their mind all the time…).

When stepping into a founder role, developers need to learn how to take back control and drive their own agendas. A founder coach can help them establish realistic goals and timelines.

3. Sprints (short-term) vs. long-term planning

Similarly, developers tend to think in terms of sprints rather than long-term planning—a habit that coaches should aim to help them break.?

Together, they can help founders focus on the future, connect the dots back to the present, and map out the path to their desired destination.?

It’s not that developers lack these long-term planning skills, but they might need honing or resurrecting.

4. Getting out of the bunker

A founder needs to be in front of customers a lot, which might not be the most comfortable space for a developer, who’s more used to spending time in front of a laptop.

It’s tempting to get lost in the purity of the code, but what I’ve seen with my clients is that they can get too far ahead of what the customer needs or can reasonably implement in one go.?

Therefore, it can be worthwhile for the coach to help them explore what’s holding them back or how they can build confidence and communication skills.

5. Unpacking personal challenges

Developer founders have to work with people who aren’t developers and who often have very different personalities and needs.

Like those pesky, emotional salespeople who need validation and don’t want to chat on Slack but in person. Or those creative marketers who won’t just give you a straight answer.?

Founders need to develop new comfort levels with confrontation, uncertainty and radical candour—and a coach can help them do that.?

6. Framework-based coaching

Developers love a good framework, and in my coaching practice, I’ve found that founders from the developer track crave more structured frameworks alongside free-flowing coaching techniques.

Founder coaching for developer founders

If you’re a developer-turned-founder and have run into one or more of the obstacles mentioned above, you might want to enlist a founder coach to help untangle some of the knots and keep your business moving in the right direction.