A day in the life of a CTO managing teams across 2 countries

Day in the Life is a series where personalities in the Asian tech community recount what they do on a typical day. Read more from the series here.

My name is Vaisagh, but since that’s hard to remember, everyone just calls me VT.

I’m the co-founder and CTO at Impress.ai, an AI chatbot platform for recruiters. I lead our engineering teams in Singapore and India, as well as ensure our product runs smoothly for our clients.

Being a co-founder drastically widens the range of responsibilities; I might be speaking at an event one day or recording a podcast the next.

Before Impress.ai, I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Tumcreate, a research platform dedicated to the improvement of Singapore’s public transportation system. There, I ran simulations to study the impact of electro-mobility on tropical megacities. Prior to that, I completed my PhD in computer science at Nanyang Technological University.

Here’s a day in my life now.

7:30 am

I wake up, glance over at my phone, check my emails, go through messages on Slack, and deal with anything urgent.

When that’s all in order, I kickstart my day by doing 20 minutes of yoga, followed by breakfast with my wife.

9:15 am

It takes me about one hour to get to work, but I try to make the most of my commute by clearing any unread emails. I also make a list of five to 10 tasks to accomplish for the day. This way, I’ll be ready to tackle the more serious stuff the moment I get to my desk.

10 am

When I get to the office, I fill up my water bottle with coffee, select a Spotify playlist, and place my to-do list next to my computer.

I’ve tried using different tools to structure my day, but there’s nothing quite like putting pen to paper, as it’s satisfying to tick things off as I finish them. Keeping this list by my side allows me to check it every couple of hours so that nothing important slips through the cracks.

The first thing I do is focus on tasks that have to do with the Singapore team or Singapore-based clients, since the engineering team in India isn’t working yet. This generally involves reviewing or preparing documents, planning, or creating a strategy to make sure our platform is delivering the right results for our clients.

The most exciting part of my morning revolves around potential partnerships or solving challenging solutions architecture for clients.

12:30 pm

1:30 to 3:30 pm

3:30 pm

4 to 7 pm

7:30 pm

10 pm