Rudy Rigot
Sep 8, 2018 · 1 min read

I’m afraid I don’t have good guidance on these, as I’ve mostly been winging it, to be honest. Like I said, mostly following people’s interest, overruled by a fair spread of the ownership when needed. If two people are interested in owning the same thing, the decision has people consequences, so I’d even more expect the manager to be the tie breaker.

However, I would hope the decision would be by itself a relief for all parties from the clarity of what they own and don’t own moving forward. If some team members have a hard time letting go of ownership after it’s been assigned, it’s a well-known major scale friction that can strongly hurt a scaling company. It’s important to find ways to teach team mates that who owns a thing doesn’t matter, as long as it’s well-owned. Here’s my go-to write-up about it: http://firstround.com/review/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/

EDIT: after some further thinking, I can attempt the advice that if two people get so heated about a piece of ownership, the best way to break the tie is to assign it to a third person who is less emotionally involved? I haven’t tried it to solve that one need, so to be taken with a grain of salt.

    Rudy Rigot

    Written by

    Eng boomerang @salesforce. Ex-@Apple. Co-founder / advisor @holbertonschool @techmeabroad. Wrote @ProgrammerEnGo. Startup mentor @techstars. Root @while42_chi.