# How to split your roles When you start the company you will often have a team. It is important that everyone in this team has a unique role to play and an independent part of the company to own. Whoever owns that piece of work will be the one making the final decision on matters regarding it This is to make sure that you are not unnecessarily fighting over arbitary decisions - and many decisions will often have been arbitary in hindsight. It is critical that you move fast and learn fast. **Common ways of splitting** The standard split is a CEO and a CTO. The CTO will be own the software decisions, build the product, and manage the technical team. The CEO will do everything else. **What if you have too many members** If you have too members, you might be tempted to invent new roles for them to fill. Sometimes you might see teams that have * Chief Data Officer * Chief Product Officer * Chief Finance Officer You will know its an invented role based on how clear the boundaries are for what they will own, and how big their job scope is. A Chief Finance Officer for a startup without revenue is almost always a made up role. Invented roles are a symptom of a team that is afraid of having the hard conversations. Understand that you are building a company first, and that making sure everyone is happy is not your priority. The team must have a conversation to remove some members or risk carrying the burden into the future. **What if you dont have the right members** Teams sometimes have 2 cofounders that specialise in the same kind of work. Examples are * 2 Business Majors building a tech company * 2 Engineers who only want to build tech In such cases either a cofounder needs to develop a different skillset, or a member needs to step down from the C-suite and become a founding member instead. Trying to have 2 cofounders fill the same role by "Co-CEO" or "CTO A and CTO B" never turns out well. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://sic.gitbook.io/startup-playbook/how-to-split-your-roles.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.