I think there's something to be said about identifying what direction you want your career to go in. In my last (pre-startup world) job I was being slowly edged into a management role- I was in charge of a team, and had meetings and agendas to assemble. I hated it- I wanted to be programming.

It sounds like Alex came to a similar conclusion. Being a CTO involves less programming than being an engineer. Sometimes it's an assumption that our career paths as engineers will take us toward being CTOs, but maybe that isn't right for everyone.