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A painful lesson we learned (2 men startup) is that you can't be co-managers. While I coded, my co-founder was out making deals. I would sometimes help and af
by Murkin 16y ago
A painful lesson we learned (2 men startup) is that you can't be co-managers.
While I coded, my co-founder was out making deals.
I would sometimes help and after two occasions where I agreed on something (rather small) but that collided with something he agreed, we had to stop.
Now, all major decisions are made by both of us with lengthy discussion.
All small decisions (technical for me and biz for him) are done by one side. We can't afford to go go into a 2 hour discussion and can't afford conflicting decisions.
Call me CTO/VP-RND/Programmer, call him CEO/Presiden/VP-Dev/Sales-Guy. But the roles are clear when it comes to making decisions.
And yes, the CTO does wash the floor and the CEO buys the coffee filters and toilet paper.
- arethuza 16y agoI remember we had a slightly painful meeting when there was 4 of us and it was clear who the best candidate for CEO was - and it wasn't one of the founders. I even said the "you aren't going to be CEO he is" to my co-founder, which I don't think he ever forgave me for (although we went on for another 6 years after that). That was probably the single best decision I made at that company. Once we got that out of the way we kind of all knew what our areas of responsibility were, before that it was "everyone does everything".
- jacquesm 16y agoThat happens far more frequently than you may think. Kudos to you and your team for recognizing this (ok, reluctantly in one case) and acting on it.