There are a lot of defunct startups in my city that were started by engineers and CTOs. Some of them had good ideas and a few even had great execution of the product.

They all failed at sales, scaling, retention, and generally running the business.

I did work for one very successful company that was founded by an engineer. However, he was focused almost exclusively on non-engineering business functions from the start.

If you want to be a CTO and do engineering things, don’t assume founding your own company is the best way to get there.