I am a cofounder and CTO at a series A start-up. I come with 10 years of experience through Jr engineer to Lead and now cofounded my company and takes up the role as a CTO.

We are a 50 member engineering team and doing great at business. I am an individual contributor ( I love coding ) and had spend a considerable amount of time into it. As we scaled our team, I have released my role to a more people manager role and very much involved in hiring and managing a team of managers and engineers.

Coming to the point, I lack a lot when it comes to public speaking and struggle with addressing a larger audience. I was once diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, but a mild one. I avoid panel discussions or events purposefully because of this. My other cofounders are good at addressing audience and during all-hands or public addressing, I speak very less which looks odd. I get few invites for panel discussions or addressing larger audience wrt to what we are doing, but I avoid them. While I drive the team and meet expectation a technical leader, this has started affecting me and I feel I am not doing the right thing to my other founders and team. I am afraid I will lose excelling at what I am doing just because of this fear and social anxiety. I had done couple of events and public speaking in the company, but it has become difficult now when team grew.

I dont know if any of you had gone through this. This is really depressing. I would like to listen to folks here who would have been in my shoes and over-came this. Looking for advises…