Can We Please Stop Calling Founders “CEOs”?
How many startups are failing because their founders are trying to do the wrong job?
Back when I was building my startups, people always called me the “CEO,” and I hated it. Why did people insist on using that title? CEOs are old people who run large companies with lots of employees. In contrast, I was in my 20s, and, for the most part, I rarely had a team of more than three people. Sure, I guess I was doing some of the same things a CEO does. But I was also doing the things a janitor does, plus 50 other jobs. That’s just part of running a startup. One minute you’re the boss, standing on stage, presenting your company to an audience of hundreds of people. The next minute you’re on the phone as a support rep getting yelled at by a disgruntled customer.
While I was doing all those jobs, I never thought of myself as someone with a fancy title. I was mostly just struggling to do whatever I had to in order to launch my company. After all, that’s what entrepreneurs do. And it’s been like that in the entrepreneurial world for a long time.
For example, think back to the early days of the public Internet. The emergence of the Web coincided with a giant boom of entrepreneurs launching new companies (something that usually happens in the wake of world-changing technologies)…
