2023 CTO Fellowship Kickoff
Evaluate
Building self awareness is the first step toward growth. The Torch Leadership Assessment helps experienced professionals gain clarity on existing strengths and development opportunities.
Coach
During regular 1:1 video sessions, an experienced Torch coach will help the leader build a custom development plan based on their leadership assessment results.
Execute
Leaders then set their own growth goals with the help of their Torch coach. Together, they will define specific actions to track progress and hit leadership development targets.
How it works
Integrate learnings and capture insights for a new leadership future.
Grow
You'll meet with your mentor monthly during your 6-month partnership, to work on your goals and focus areas
Sign Up Here
The AWS CTO Fellowship is a community of over 3,000 and growing early-stage and venture-backed CTOs. The community is invite-only and designed to benefit all seed-stage startups, regardless of cloud preference, by providing with access to technical resources, guidance and networking. During a kick-off month of custom programming, fellows join the CTO Fellowship Slack workspace to connect with their cohort and the larger CTOF community where they will have lifelong access to community events like technical workshops, fireside chats, and socials.
Session
Topic
Week 1
Welcome + Icebreakers
Program introduction + meet the cohort networking
Learn how to build repeatable & efficient sales mechanisms as a founder with Manuel Hartmann -SalesPlayBook
Get introduced to pricing decision-making and best practices for open source, mid-market and enterprise SaaS pricing with Christian Wirth - Optimal Pricing
Hear how Clickhouse leverages analytics and experimentation to constantly improve their approach to pricing with Dmitry Pavlov - Director, Clickhouse
Stage 1 Schedule
CTO Fireside Chat #1
Learn best practices from late-stage tech leaders – past speakers have included the CTOs of Reddit, Brex, Ada, Superhuman, Flatiron Health, and more.
Small group sessions with AWS Solutions Architects to answer your top-of-mind technical questions – past topics have included Cost Optimization, Common Serverless Architectures, Security Fundamentals, and more.
Meet Your Fellow CTOs
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Topic times and dates vary
Group Technical Office Hours
Welcome &
By registering, you agree to the AWS Event Terms and Conditions and the AWS Community Codes of Conduct. AWS handles your information as described in the AWS Privacy Notice.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is considered a seed-stage startup?
Typically, startups in the kickoff program have raised a seed round of funding ($1M - $10M) and have under 20 employees. If the content of the program still looks relevant and you have raised more (or less) capital or have a larger team, you are welcome to apply and we will let you know if you've been accepted.
2. What is the cost of the program?
There is no cost, but a time commitment is required in Stage 1. To get the most out of the experience, you will want the relevant attendees for each session to be able to commit to attending their session(s), typically between 3-6 hours depending on the job role.
3. Will the sessions be recorded in case I cannot attend one?
In order to build trust and provide a safe space where attendees can openly share and discuss their businesses and challenges, the sessions are not recorded. They are interactive and questions are encouraged throughout.
4. Will the entire program be virtual?
Yes, the program is entirely virtual and sessions take place over Zoom.
5. Is this program only for startups based in EMEA?
The program on this application page is built for and open to startups based in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and events are scheduled to EMEA-friendly timezones. If you receive an invitation to apply and are not based in EMEA, you are welcome and our team may be able to direct you to more information for appropriate programs in your geography if relevant.
Join our next cohort⤵
The DevTools Spotlight cohorts are run once per year. Once you sign up, we will be in touch to discuss your interest. Where possible, we will invite you to the next available cohort. If you are unable to make the dates for the next cohort, we will invite you to the following one.
Who is this program for?
AWS DevTools Spotlight is an invite-only, virtual program for DevTool / Infra startup executives who have raised a (Pre) Seed round in the last 12 months and aim to fast track their enterprise readiness in order to successfully complete a Series A round in the next 12-18 months. Each week is designed for a different startup functional leader, as detailed in the Schedule below.
Time and Date
The next available program cohort kicks off in November and you can sign up now. Stage 1 sessions take place every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon for 1-3 hours over 3 weeks, and the 1:1 sessions for Stage 2 are scheduled individually with you. Details on the session descriptions for Stage 1 can be found below.
- 2024 Cohort: 4 November - 22 November (open for signups)
- 2025 Cohort: Dates to be confirmed, sign up now to confirm your interest
Typical Fellowship
Schedule
EMEA DevTools Spotlight
The AWS DevTools Spotlight program is a free, invite-only program focused on supporting (pre) seed stage DevTool / Infra startups towards becoming enterprise and Series A ready. The program runs annually. Sign up below to register your interest and we will be in touch shortly.
CTO Day: Get to know each other and share challenges you face as DevTool startup CTOs, learn about building enterprise grade products + guest speaker session with Tim Nolet - Founder, Checkly
About the program
There are 2 stages of the program. The first 3 weeks of the program is dedicated to 1:few sessions built around 3 pillars: Go-to-Market strategy, Product/Technology enablement and Startup Business enablement. Each week is designed for a specific job role (sales, technology, founder/leadership) and is made up of 1-2 hour sessions 3 times a week consisting of workshops, presentations, roundtables and networking opportunities. This stage is designed to provide DevTool / Infra startups with the fundamentals of an enterprise ready go-to-market strategy, technical enablement, startup business and fundraising best practices, and networking opportunities.
Stage 2 of the program consists of up to 10 customized one-to-one sessions between participants and AWS. The content and attendees of these sessions is defined by the desired outcomes of the startup, such as customized roadmaps, expert advice, investor introductions, or a POC, and are scheduled individually with each startup over a 2-month period.
Time (CET)
Monday
1:30-2:30pm
Monday
2:30-4:30pm
Audience
ALL
Head of Sales, CSO, Sales-focused CEO
Featured Speakers
Testimonials
I love your team and approach to the sessions! You are very open, that's great!
Dmitry Y. (CTO & Co-Founder)
Wilhelm L. (CEO and Founder)
It actually opened up a whole new world, that sales & pricing (obviously) has so many aspects to it. Love to speak with someone who literally works with just this as a focus.
Very practical and backed by experience.
Simon R. (Chief Revenue Officer)
Sharing is caring. Getting the input from people who have done it before and their reflections.
Sarah H. (Commercial Manager)
The variety of participating companies. So diverse, so new and very promising products. Very nice networking opportunities.
Davinder S. (Lead Developer)
Extremely useful advice, well framed for startups of our scale.
Stephanos A. (CTO)
Manuel Hartmann started and scaled SalesPlaybook from 0 to 7-figure annual revenue in <4 years by helping 280+ B2B entrepreneurs with a focus on early-stage SaaS. He is 100% dedicated to help founders like you to generate qualified pipeline, close bigger deals faster and scale sales efficiently. Before SalesPlaybook, he built up sales for an AI startup, co-led Salesforce projects with ABB and the WEF and also helped selling the last Tesla Roadsters in Switzerland.
"Startups that sell are startups that scale. Especially in this fundraising environment, "funding" from customers is your #1 driver of enterprise value as you scale from (pre-)Seed stage towards Series A / 7-figure ARR. In the end, sales pays salaries, so the sooner you get amazing at B2B sales, the sooner you can scale your customer base, your team and therewith your positive impact."
Manuel Hartmann, Founder & CEO at SalesPlayBook
Aurore Poirier brings 8 years prior experience in fundraising and business development to her current role supporting EMEA startups on their go-to-market (GTM) journey with AWS. She is dedicated to helping startups grow their business by leveraging the AWS Partner Network and AWS Marketplace for co-selling, joint marketing and product integrations.
Bob van Luijt, CEO and Co-Founder of Weaviate, an open-source vector search engine. At just 15 years of age, Bob started his own software company in the Netherlands. He went on to study music at ArtEZ University of the Arts and Berklee College of Music, and completed the Harvard Business School Program of Management Excellence. Bob is also a TedX speaker, discussing the relationship between software and language.
Bob van Luijt, Founder, Weaviate
Tim Nolet is a co-founder of monitoring platform Checkly (checklyhq.com) and vamp.io (sold to Circle CI). He used to work on big, Enterprisey Java stuff 20 years ago, but is mostly vertically aligning divs now. Actually studied to be an Art Historian.
Tim Nolet, Founder, Checkly
Tudor is CTO at Xata, a Postgres platform with branches and zero-downtime, reversible, schema changes. Before Xata, Tudor has worked as a tech lead at companies like Elastic and Oracle.
Tudor Golubenco, CTO, Xata
Wednesday
1-2pm
Wednesday
2-3pm
Go-to-Market
Week 2
Technology
Tuesday
1-4pm
Wednesday
12:30-
3:30pm
CTO, Head of Engineering
FinOps Day: Join us for a series of workshops introducing FinOps for DevTools with best practices shared by Tudor Golubenco - CTO, Xata
CTO/Head of Engineering
Software Architects or Lead Developers
Thursday
1-4pm
Architect Day: Learn about SaaS architecture patterns to support enterprise-grade products with a founder journey from open source to enterprise SaaS shared by Bob van Luijt - Founder, Weaviate
Week 3
Startup Business Enablement
C-Level / Management
Tuesday
1-2:30pm
Hiring: Learn how you can hire talent as founder with hiring lessons from 500+ startups.
Wednesday
1-2pm
Fundraising: Find out how to take your startup from Seed to Series A with a Roundtable of top-tier VC Investors and recent Series A executives.
Thursday
1-2pm
Community: Learn how Deepset is growing their Haystack developer community and key lessons they have learned along the way.
Thursday
2:30-3:30pm
Learn how Qovery sells their DevOps solutions to AWS customers and built a win-win partnership with Romaric Philogène - CEO, Qovery
