

Ask HN: Should we be Co-Founders? or CEO and CTO?  - lbr

We graduate in May. He is a badass coder. I&#x27;ve done sales, design, growth hacking and everything uncoded.<p>Seems silly to take a title like &quot;CEO&quot; or &quot;CTO&quot; when there is nothing but an idea. Seems equally silly to avoid a critical conversation and leave roles ambiguous.<p>I understand that titles are somewhat arbitrary and meaningless. But I also understand that they serve some purpose.<p>EDIT: We have several ideas we are vetting. We are at different stages with different ideas. Some have prototypes. Some are just ideas.
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kitcar
Personally, I prefer when people just say they are co-founders when there are
no employees at the company. Kind of pretentious to introduce yourself as the
Chief Executive Officer of no one.

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davidcoronado
The most important thing you can do now is establish clear roles if you have
identified your solution to the problem you guys are tackling. For example you
both may code but one of you can take on the Role of Execution, meaning you
will be in charge of executing any ideas the two of you come up with. And your
other Co-Founder can take on the role of Strategy or Technical, meaning
although he might not be the best at executing the idea or sales he can
definitely understand how to get there. It really depends on your relationship
and both of ya'll strengths and weakness. Anyhow I would suggest taking on
these specific roles for now until you can validate the solution you are
creating and gain some traction.

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phantom_oracle
As the other guys have mentioned, titles mean nothing. Equity and the
controlling stake mean everything.

The guy with 51% (or maybe 50.1% or maybe the adequate amount in your
jurisdiction) has majority voting rights and he is the one who calls the
shots.

According to what you have said, you guys are already at different stages with
different ideas, which means you're in quite deep without any formal equity
structure.

This will always hurt you later on, even if the co-founder is your own
sibling!

Get the equity right and then just be co-founders.

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bitonomics
Similar to other replies the most important thing is the definition of roles.

As a tangible example, our startup (team of 7) we actually use both within our
title. Co-Founder and CEO. Externally this is good, because it provides
initial guidance for others who are getting to know the company and aide them
in making some initial judgements. For example the CEO is going to be the one
responsible for raising money, acquiring customers, recruiting, etc.

So if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, no reason to wait to call
it a duck.

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baruch
It seems you are conflating two different topics here, one of splitting future
titles and working order and the other of presenting things externally.

Figure out now how you intend to split the roles between you and how you
intend to work together. The CEO will be in charge of the CTO.

After you figure that out figure out how you are going to present things
externally and on business cards. For a two person company co-founders seems
better but it really depends on you two and your views.

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27182818284
CEO will hold more power than CTO. It just does, no matter how informal it is
at that stage. It is the traditional leader's name. If that person makes it a
routine of calling him/herself CEO, they will appear more powerful than you,
even if you have equal equity and you write "CTO" on all of your stuff and in
every conversation.

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burnmeout
Co-Founders. In my opinion, the titles CEO and CTO are only important in the
context of large companies where you need to designate separate sectors and
have a figurehead for each of those.

At this stage, you're both going to be working so closely together that making
such a rigid distinction is kind of pointless.

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softwareman
I think any conflict later on will be disastrous. So why not decide
beforehand. Decision can be altered but atleast there will not be any
confusion for the initial period.

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kayhi
Don't worry about titles at the idea stage.

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lbr
Thanks for the comment. To clarify: We have several ideas we are vetting. We
are at different stages with different ideas. Some have prototypes. Some are
just ideas.

