# The Startup CTO

> The Startup CTO is Dan Williams' engineering advisory practice for early-stage startups. It helps technical and non-technical founders, senior executives, investors, advisors and engineering leaders understand engineering capability and technology risk, make better decisions, build stronger teams and adopt AI deliberately.

The site is written in British English. Dan Williams is the named author and practitioner. HTML pages are intended for people; the linked Markdown versions contain equivalent primary content for language models and text-first tools.

## Primary pages

- [Home and services](https://thestartupcto.com/index.md): positioning, common problems, AI Engineering Review, ways to work together and concise principles.
- [Engineering principles](https://thestartupcto.com/principles/index.md): eight strong defaults for startup engineering teams, plus autonomy, mastery, purpose and the operating loop.
- [Engineering excellence](https://thestartupcto.com/engineering-excellence/index.md): a practical synthesis on defining, recruiting, developing and retaining exceptional engineers.
- [About Dan Williams](https://thestartupcto.com/about/index.md): career context, operating experience and the personal-practice model.

## Source resource

- [Engineering Excellence Framework PDF](https://thestartupcto.com/resources/engineering-excellence-framework.pdf): the supplied 39-page research guide behind the engineering excellence synthesis.

## Contact

- Email: [hello@thestartupcto.com](mailto:hello@thestartupcto.com)