The CPTO role is spreading at B2B companies above $100M ARR. SaaStr's Jason Lemkin argues it produces leaders who lack depth on product or engineering, the wrong hire for an AI era that rewards speed and technical skill.
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The Chief Product and Technology Officer role is popping up at more B2B companies north of $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Especially ones trying to reposition themselves as more AI-native. But across dozens of companies, the results are consistent: the person in that role ends up being neither a real product leader nor a real technology leader, according to Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr.
"Look, titles are just titles. But the CPTO? 95 times out of 100, it's a flag," Lemkin wrote in a recent blog post. "They are neither, they do nothing, and they fail. Especially in the Age of AI."
The logic behind the role sounds reasonable on paper. Product and engineering report to two different leaders who often clash. Roadmaps slip. Priorities conflict. The CEO gets tired of mediating. Someone suggests combining product vision and technical execution under one leader – one throat to choke, as the saying goes.
In practice, the person who takes the CPTO role lacks depth on both sides, Lemkin argued. They do not code. They have not shipped code in years, maybe a decade. They are not close enough to the architecture to make real technical calls, not debugging production issues at 2 a.m., not reviewing pull requests. And they are not close to the product either. They are not sitting with customers every week, not obsessing over the specific workflow causing 40% of churn, not in the weeds on the competitive feature gap killing deals.
"What do they actually do? They want to be strategists," Lemkin wrote. "They want to sit in board meetings and talk about 'platform vision' and 'technical transformation.' They want to draw org charts and hire VPs under them."
The timing makes the role especially dangerous. AI is rewriting how software gets built. Engineering teams are becoming three times more productive with AI coding tools. Product leaders need to rethink workflows because AI changes what is even possible. A CPTO who functions as an abstraction layer between the CEO and the people actually building slows everything down.
"This is not the time for a 'strategist' layer between your CEO and the people actually building," Lemkin wrote.
What companies actually need, he said, is a VP or SVP of Engineering who remains technical enough to make real architecture decisions, especially now. Someone who understands what AI agents can actually do today, not just what McKinsey says they will do in 2028. And separately, a Head of Product who lives and breathes the customer problem – in calls every single day, knowing exactly which features are table stakes and which ones are differentiated.
"Those are two very different humans. Two very different skill sets. Two very different ways of spending a Tuesday," Lemkin wrote. "When you combine them into one role, you don't get the best of both. You get the worst of both. You get a layer of abstraction that slows everything down."
There is an exception for very large enterprises. At a $50 billion software company with 40 product lines, a uber-technical leader sitting across everything might make sense. But even then, Lemkin argued, the better structure is a CTO who actually understands the technical stack and a CPO who actually understands the customer.
"If Oracle doesn't need a CPTO, your $150 million ARR vertical SaaS company definitely doesn't," he wrote.
The real reason companies hire a CPTO is often that the CEO has checked out of product, Lemkin said. The CEO does not want to be in the details anymore, does not want to adjudicate between the product leader and the engineering leader. So they hire a CPTO to make that problem go away.
"In B2B, the CEO has to stay close to the product," he wrote. "At least through $500 million ARR, probably longer. You can't outsource that to a single hire and hope it works."
His recommendation: keep it simple. A strong VP or SVP of Engineering. A strong VP or SVP of Product. Both report to the CEO. The CEO stays engaged enough to break ties and set direction. Or, in some cases, a real technical CTO and a CPO as two distinct roles. Either way, the person who owns the product roadmap should be talking to customers every week, and the person who owns engineering should still be able to read the code.
"A CPTO almost never clears it on either side," Lemkin wrote. "The age of AI rewards speed, technical depth, and customer obsession. A Chief Product & Technology Officer gives you none of those things."
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