Startups and Titles
Ed Sim had a great post recently about top-heavy startup teams.
I agree. My view in any startup -- including ones in which I have been directly involved -- should always be prepared to layer every employee with someone better and more senior. Sometimes, that means moving the old person out, but more often than not it simply means putting someone above them in the food chain.
When I'm building teams, I avoid using titles as long as possible and make clear to everyone from the get-go that in a startup roles change and everyone needs to pitch in a little bit on everything. Tech guys need to have a little of their mind on marketing and marketing folks need to have a little of their brainpower devoted to the product. That's just how it is to be successful. Now, I'm never going to ask a marketing person to code or a programmer to write marketing copy, but you get the idea.
The challenge with executive titles tends to be most acute with founders. Once titles must be assigned (as they generally must once you ask for money or begin to get involved in serious business development and partnership discussions), there's a tendency to be sure all founders have lofty titles. In principal, I don't disagree with this so long as the mindset is such that each is prepared to step aside for someone better to fill that role down the road. A good founder will have no problem with this.
Of course, another solution is to give founders lofty sounding titles that don't require a title change when hired talent comes on board. For a while at one of the companies I founded I was the Chief Innovation Officer. I didn't have the technical training to be CTO and didn't want to give anyone inside or outside the company the impression I did, so that title did a good job of representing my role in leading product development. I've also seen plenty of Chief Evangelists and the like. Or look at Bill Gates (Chief Software Architect) to understand this isn't just a small company phenomenon.
But when it comes to hiring folks with lofty titles, take it slow. It's hard to take away a title from a VP/Sales and still keep him on board. And if you can't get someone to join your startup without handing out that kind of title, it probably tells you something about the suitability of that person to a startup environment.
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