What does it take to be a Great CTO?

Welcome to our first event of 2025! You might have noticed something looks slightly different - we're now the Auckland Product and Software Leaders Group, reflecting the fact that our talk topics are useful to both product and tech leaders. We're kicking things off with an amazing talk from Daniel Walters!

Being a Great CTO takes a mix of business acumen, strategic thinking, managing relationships, cultivating culture and environments, excellent time management and ability to focus, courage and stick-to-it-iveness. Oh and it requires a career acquiring technical expertise and more importantly an ability empathise with what it takes to work with Technology. It's not your technical knowledge that will be most important but your knowledge of how to learn and improve working with Technology.

Unfortunately it also often takes being a bad CTO first. That's not to say you should try to be bad. There's more resources available today to help you prepare than ever before. However some lessons may not be as apparent as when you make the mistake for yourself. How can we use those mistakes to grow and improve quickly?

For more about what is expected of CTOs and what you can do to prepare and how you can continue to hone your craft and take the shortest path to great join us as Daniel Walters shares experiences acquired as CTO, CIO, CTO and as a coach and consultant for CTOs.

About our speaker:
Daniel Walters is a full-time dad, part-time CTO coach, and fractional CTO and Technology Strategy consultant based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Drawing from his experience in executive technology leadership roles, Daniel has led startups, scaleups, and enterprises. Notable achievements include his contributions to sell Hitwise for $USD240M, helping Prestariang win an MYR 3.5 billion concession to upgrade Malaysia’s immigration systems, leading the merger and integration of JobsDB and Jobstreet, and establishing a 70-person development team in Malaysia for Experian's Consumer Insights division.

His role as CTO/CIO for Seek Asia—a merger of leading job marketplaces Jobsdb and Jobstreet in seven Southeast Asian markets—proved formative. Daniel faced dynamic challenges, from new global competitors to civil unrest and natural disasters, requiring a resilient and adaptive leadership approach.

He shares insights from his leadership journey in his weekly publication, "Great CTO" and on the monthly livestream CTO Life Line, which is dedicated to helping CTOs.

Food & Drinks
As usual - we'll provide the pizza and drinks :)
****NOTE***
We'll be hosting this at the Microsoft offices: Microsoft House, Level 5/22 Viaduct Harbour Avenue, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010.
The Microsoft building now has access gates installed on the group floor. To get through, you will need a QR code or someone will need to scan you in.
If you're coming along, can you please email **anthony@mazconsultants.co.nz** with your email address at least 24hrs before the event - someone from Microsoft will email you a QR code.
We'll also have someone scanning people in from 5pm until about 5:45pm. If you can't get in for some reason - drop me (Anthony) an SMS on 021 443 199.