In recent years, some non-I.T. professionals start their own startups, recently a friend asked how should a startup form and arrange their management team. From my experience as a previous tech firm founder, I shared the job allocation of CEO, CTO, COO at a startup in short.
First, the startup founder should create a story and a product which story highlights the user demand of the product. After creating the story & product idea, the founder should share the story with friends and listen to their feedback, and then tune the story and the product.
My suggestion is that the startup must consist CEO and CTO. CEO has good business knowledge and communication, reach out to the targeted customers, partners, and investors for the story and the product, one of the main roles of the CEO is to communicate outsides. CTO should build and manage the technology R&D team, he should well understand the new technology and technology trend. CTO always listens to the report from the CEO about the meeting and status of business opportunities and partnerships, and determines the agile development plan and decides the next Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
If COO is found by the team, the role of COO in a startup is building the company operation, and assists the CEO to apply the entrepreneurship fund and handling documents, eg. hiring, invoicing, financial management, etc. COO should have business operation knowledge.
Author: Sammy Fung
former tech firm founder
global technology community leader
a Christian