Living in NYC, I have been around a TON of venture backed startups with the classic non technical CEO, technical CTO. Some HUGE percentage of startups see the CTO fired once the tech stack and revenue are stabilized.
The incentive from the CEOs perspective to remove a contender as well as claw back the equity is huge. Early stage the CTO is the most critical, but after real traction they can be replaced far easier than most want to admit.
My advice for technical founders is to always place themselves first, from a legal and organizational perspective. For a technical founder with social skills, a non technical founder brings very little value relative to their vesting in the early stage.
Once the business hits a certain level of revenue, the mvp is finished etc, whoever is the face of the company, I.e. CEO has way more power. CTO if they have shipped a complete product that’s getting paying customers can be replaced with an engineering manager. But not before
Getting the product to some level of completion is a monumental lift
>> If the technical founder can be replaced so easily, how does it follow that the non-technical founder is less valuable?
Because at that point, you can raise VC cash and hire for the job instead. The idea has been vetted. You can theoretically even rebuild the entire codebase from scratch just looking at the existing app. The CTO should maintain equal voting rights for as long as possible
The incentive from the CEOs perspective to remove a contender as well as claw back the equity is huge. Early stage the CTO is the most critical, but after real traction they can be replaced far easier than most want to admit.
My advice for technical founders is to always place themselves first, from a legal and organizational perspective. For a technical founder with social skills, a non technical founder brings very little value relative to their vesting in the early stage.