3.08Co-founders and the founding team

Assigning titles: CEO, CTO, CSO

Stage: Pre-seedCore

1. Core idea and who it's for#

Titles in a startup do two jobs. Internally, they say who decides what. Externally, they tell investors, customers and recruits who leads. At the start, only one title really matters: CEO , the person accountable for the whole company, for fundraising and for the board. The other titles should describe real responsibilities, and they should leave room for the company to grow past the people holding them.

For deeptech teams, the usual founder titles are:

  • CEO: strategy, fundraising, the board, hiring the leadership team, and usually commercial matters early on.
  • CTO: technology and product engineering. In hardware and software, they build the thing.
  • CSO (chief scientific officer): the science and the R&D roadmap, scientific credibility, and IP. This is common in biotech, chemistry, materials and quantum, and often held by an academic co-founder (2.12).
  • COO: operations, manufacturing, regulatory work and quality. This is more often a later hire than a founder title.

The main principles are:

  1. Choose the CEO on purpose, based on who can do the CEO's job over the next 18–24 months, not on seniority, who invented the technology, or equity.
  2. Avoid title inflation. A "Chief" title for the second hire creates a problem when a seasoned executive is needed above them later.
  3. Agree in writing how titles may change as the company grows (3.07, 3.16).

Who this is for: founding teams settling titles at formation, and teams adding a cofounder or first executive.

2. Evidence: how titles evolve#

Founder-CEOs often don't stay CEO. Noam Wasserman's 2008 Harvard Business Review study of 212 US startups found that most founders gave up leadership of their companies, and called founders who remain CEO "a very rare breed" ([Rework, summarising

Wasserman](https://resources.rework.com/libraries/startup-fundamentals/founder-vs-cofounder-vs-ceo)). Founder-CEO succession becomes more likely with each funding round (OnStartups). That doesn't mean scientist-CEOs should step aside. It means the CEO question should be revisited deliberately at each stage (3.17).

Technology leadership is usually founder-led early. Felicis studied executive teams at venture-backed companies and found:

  • all technology functions were founder-led before Series A;
  • technology was the function most likely to have an early C-level leader who scaled through several rounds;
  • almost 50% of companies hired a non-founder VP of Engineering or CTO at Series A (Felicis).

Other functions were different. Every company that had a C-level sales executive before Series B replaced them with a more seasoned leader by Series C. And 40% of companies had no formal CFO until Series C or later (Felicis).

The CTO role changes with stage. At pre-seed and seed, you need a technical co-founder who builds. The Series A CTO shapes technical foundations and defends the technical strategy to investors. From Series B, the job becomes leading a large organisation and setting strategy (LeadScale). The same is true of a CSO, who goes from running experiments to leading an R&D organisation.

Title inflation has costs. Practitioners warn that too many leadership titles blur accountability (Doug Levin). Inflated titles also lead to demotions, retention problems and politics later (Engineered). A common practice in venture-backed companies is to bring in roles such as CFO and chief revenue officer after the Series A, and more C-level roles after the Series B (Doug Levin).

3. Method: choose the CEO, define every role, plan for change#

Step 1. Choose the CEO by the job, not the person. For the next 18–24 months, list what the CEO must do: raise the next round, close the first customers or partners, recruit the leadership team, and manage the board and the TTO. For each founder, ask:

  • Who will investors trust to run the company?
  • Who do customers want to deal with?
  • Who wants the job, including the parts nobody enjoys, such as HR, legal and saying no?
  • Who has the time? A professor with one day a week can't be CEO (2.12).

If two founders both want the role, use the trial-project evidence (3.03) and a neutral adviser.

Step 2. Write a one-paragraph role charter for each founder. It should cover what they own, what they decide alone, and what they don't do. Put it in the founder agreement (3.07). For example:

  • CEO: fundraising, the board, finance, commercial strategy, executive hiring, and final decisions on cross-functional trade-offs.
  • CTO: the product and engineering roadmap, technical hiring, technical due diligence, and choice of tools and suppliers.
  • CSO: the scientific roadmap, experimental design, publications and IP strategy, scientific advisory board relations and technical credibility with partners.

Step 3. If you have both a CTO and a CSO, draw the line between them. A common split in deeptech is:

  • the CSO owns what is scientifically true and possible : research, mechanisms and the next-generation platform;
  • the CTO owns turning it into a product that works reliably : engineering, scale-up, manufacturing interfaces and software.

Write down who decides when a scientific choice affects how the product is built.

Step 4. Keep titles modest below the founders. Use Head of X or Lead for early hires. Keep C-level and VP titles for roles you expect to hold at the next stage, or for founders. Say up front: "As we grow we'll hire senior leaders, and your title may change, but your scope and equity are protected."

Step 5. Agree how titles will be reviewed. Write into the founder agreement that roles and titles will be reviewed at each priced round, with input from the board. This makes a later change, such as hiring a VP of Engineering under or alongside the founding CTO, part of a process rather than a demotion.

Worked example (illustrative)#

A spinout developing a new class of solid-state batteries has three founders:

  • Professor K, who invented the electrolyte and will stay at the university one day a week;
  • Dr M, a postdoc who has built the cells and will go full-time;
  • S, a former battery-industry engineer who has run supplier negotiations.

Titles:

  • S is CEO: full-time, with industry credibility, and wants the job.
  • Dr M is CTO: cell engineering, scale-up and the pilot line.
  • Professor K is CSO, part-time, with a charter limited to the scientific roadmap, the scientific advisory board and IP strategy. Big decisions stay with the full-time founders.

The agreement says roles will be reviewed at the Series A. At that point, they expect to hire a VP of Manufacturing, and possibly a full-time head of R&D who reports to the CTO, while Professor K becomes chief scientific adviser.

Titles such as CEO and CTO are internal labels. The legal roles that carry duties and liability differ by country.

India#

  • Directors are the legal role. A private company needs at least two directors, and at least one must be resident in India. Executive titles such as CEO are designations. "Key managerial personnel" (including the managing director, CEO, CFO and company secretary) are a formal category mainly for larger or public companies.
  • A managing director or whole-time director has specific rules and approvals under the Companies Act. Many founders are appointed "director" and use "CEO" as their designation.
  • Government and academic founders, such as faculty or CSIR scientists, may need institutional permission to be directors (2.12). A CSO title without a board seat is often simpler.

US#

  • Officers (president, secretary, treasurer, and often CEO) are appointed by the board under the bylaws, and directors sit on the board. Founders are usually both. Delaware law doesn't require a CTO or CSO, so those are management titles.
  • Signing authority follows officer roles. Make sure the person signing contracts is an authorised officer.
  • When a founder stops being CEO, check the board-composition and directordesignation rights in the charter and investor agreements, and the founder's employment and vesting terms (Lowenstein Sandler).

UK#

  • Directors are the legal role under the Companies Act 2006. A private company needs at least one director, and identity verification of directors is being phased in by Companies House. CEO, CTO and CSO are internal titles.
  • Academic founders often hold a director role only with their university's approval (2.12). Many spinouts give them a CSO title and a board-observer or advisory role instead.
  • Investors' articles usually give founders the right to appoint one or more directors while they hold a set share percentage. Titles don't change that, but role changes may.

Scripts#

Deciding who is CEO:

"Let's not decide this on who invented what or who's older. Let's list what the CEO has to do in the next two years and each say honestly which of those we want to do and are good at. Then we'll ask two advisers who know us both."

Offering a modest title to an early hire:

"We're offering 'Head of Engineering' rather than 'CTO'. You'll own engineering, and the scope is the same. As we grow we'll be honest about what each role needs, and you'll have every chance to grow into it. We'd rather not give you a title now that becomes a fight later."

Explaining a CTO and CSO split to investors:

"The CSO owns what's scientifically possible: the platform roadmap, the science and IP. The CTO owns turning it into product: engineering, scale-up and reliability. Where they overlap, the CEO decides, within the roadmap agreed with the board."

Common mistakes#

  1. Choosing the CEO by seniority or invention rather than by the job.
  2. Two founders sharing "co-CEO" titles with no clear decision rights.
  3. Giving C-level titles to early hires, which creates demotion fights later.
  4. A CSO and a CTO with overlapping remits and no rule for resolving it.
  5. Not linking titles to legal roles, such as directors and officers, and to signing authority.
  6. Never revisiting titles as the company grows (3.16, 3.17).
  • 2.12 Professor as co-founder
  • 3.01 Do you need a co-founder?
  • 3.04 Bringing in a business CEO
  • 3.07 Founder agreements
  • 3.10 Part-time and academic co-founders
  • 3.16 How founder roles change
  • 3.17 Replacing yourself as CEO

Sources#

The worked example is illustrative. This playbook is not legal advice on director or officer duties. Last checked November 2026.

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