The CTO’s Guide to Special Projects & Emerging Tech

In this episode, I sit down with Nate Sullivan, the CTO at Academia.edu, to discuss technology strategy and special projects. Nate shares insights on identifying and prioritizing emerging technologies, balancing innovation with business needs, and collaborating with product teams to drive impactful technical advancements.

Key Takeaways

The Role of a CTO in Special Projects

Nate focuses on exploring technologies a few quarters ahead while aligning them with business strategy.

Balancing Exploration with Business Needs

Special projects should solve real business problems rather than being just theoretical experiments.

AI & Its Application in Research

Academia.edu has developed AI-powered tools like Academia Answers to extract insights from millions of research papers.

Assessing Emerging Technologies

Instead of chasing distant tech trends, Nate prioritizes technologies with immediate use cases.

Product & Engineering Alignment

Special projects often treat the product team as the customer, ensuring technical capabilities translate into valuable user experiences.

Measuring Success & Knowing When to Pivot

Projects have clear time-bound evaluations—if results don’t align with expectations, it's time to reassess or move on.

Timestamped Highlights

[00:00] Introduction to the episode & guest, Nate Sullivan

[00:01] What Academia.edu does & Nate’s role as CTO

[00:02] Exploring technologies for future implementation

[00:04] AI-powered innovation at Academia.edu (Academia Answers)

[00:07] How far ahead should companies look at emerging tech?

[00:08] Working with the product team—when and how to involve them

[00:12] Deciding when to stop a special project that isn’t progressing

[00:14] Evaluating success: AB testing & impact on users

[00:17] How the special projects team operates within engineering

[00:19] Communicating progress to leadership & aligning with company goals

[00:21] Final thoughts & how to connect with Nate

Notable Quote

"I think the crucial thing is building something that a customer actually wants, which is very hard as we all know. It requires really understanding their needs, but also knowing about tools that they might not naturally think of." — Nate Sullivan

Connect with Nate

Find Nate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate00/

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