In the world of startups, a founder's journey is marked by constant evolution. While we often focus on the positions within a company - CTO, CMO, CFO - it's the roles that founders and their leadership teams play that truly drive success in this dynamic environment. Understanding these roles and how they shift over time is crucial for navigating the existential challenges that every startup faces.
We like to talk about positions as the actual work someone does: product manager or CTO. When we say role, we are talking about how an individual behaves in interactions with others. What role do they play in a team? What role do they play when decisions are being made? Unlike a position, roles can change based on the situation as well as over time.
We’ve identified six critical roles that founders must master or learn to delegate as their company grows - or at least make sure their core team is complete with. Though these are not exhaustive, we believe having these roles covered can directly address the make-or-break issues at each stage of development.
From the beginning of your business, map out what roles you and your co-founders will play — a useful lens for looking deeper at a cofounder’s capabilities. This can also be a framework to use when hiring early core team members, who will also play different roles in key decision-making, or building teams as the company scales. This schema is most useful when you as a founder are honest about how you fit into it — where your strengths and weaknesses are and how you can supplement those with smart team building. It can also help you think both about how you can effectively contribute to company decision making, and how the business overall makes key decisions.
Survival-critical roles: the foundation of early success
Especially in the earliest stages - from pre-seed to just before Series A - we observe the following three roles are essential for survival:
- Doer
The relentless executor who turns ideas into action. They remind everyone that there’s work to be done and push for action, especially crucial for early-stage product development. If the doer isn’t present, deadlines get missed.
- Visionary
The big-picture thinker who inspires and drives long-term goals, while still keeping their feet on the ground. The visionary in the group pushes the team to think and dream big and has a vision for how the organization will look in five or even 10 years. Their imagination inspires other team members.
- Tactician/Strategist
This is a role that bridges the gap between doers and visionaries – if doers are pushing for the next steps in the next sprint, and visionaries are advocating for a 10-year plan, strategists are encouraging the group to think about the consequences of decisions in the mid-term. They tend to be grounded and realistic, people who are thinking ahead to look at the steps needed over the medium term to deliver on vision. To give a detailed example, if a company has to change its pricing model frequently, or the sales team spends significant time going after a particular customer segment only to find there isn’t a fit there, someone might not be playing the strategist role.
In general, we see it is rare that all three skill sets are understood and practiced in early-stage companies. While every company is different, it is most often the first two (Doer and Visionary) that are well embedded. What is most frequently missing is that strategic bridge between the vision and the implementation which makes up the third one, the strategist, or tactician.
These roles must be played by the founder or co-founders in the beginning. Why? Because they directly address the most pressing challenges of early-stage startups:
- Pre-seed
The biggest problem at pre-seed is not having the right co-founders. That could mean having the right insights to tackle the problem that the company wants to solve, but it can also relate to having these three core roles covered. Founders must be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, ensuring all three roles are covered between them.
- Seed
At seed, the biggest problem is that founders hire mediocre core talent who is not strong enough to iterate quickly and execute smartly. We recommend companies be prepared to be very generous to close top talent – after all, these are the people who are building the foundations of your company. Again, having all three survival-critical roles is necessary to make that happen. The visionary inspires top talent to take the risk and join a startup, the strategist plans for which hires the firm will need, and the doer ensures swift, quality execution in recruitment.
Scale-critical roles: propelling growth beyond Series A
As your startup approaches Series A and beyond, three additional roles become more crucial for scaling. The key for founders to navigate this evolution is self-awareness, planning ahead and strategic hiring. Recognize which roles you naturally excel in and which you need to develop or delegate. Build a leadership team that complements your strengths and fills in the gaps.
- Moodmaker
The positive force that maintains team morale and culture. At Series A, this role usually needs to be played by one of the founders. An effective moodmaker harnesses the power of communication to motivate the team and loves an all-hands or encouraging message on Slack. At later stages, this role can be delegated to someone else on the leadership team.
- Challenger
The provocative thinker who identifies risks and questions assumptions. When a company starts to grow, this is a crucial role, the existence of which can determine a good company from a great one. They point out potential mistakes or pitfalls that can prevent resources from being misallocated or a majority of “yes men” (or women) from making the wrong decisions. Founders can play this role at later stages when they can step back a bit from simply trying to build the business and play this role, or they can delegate this role to someone.
- Mediator
A strong empath who creates a psychologically safe space for the entire team to share their opinions openly and without prejudice. Their high EQ helps them understand when team members are feeling uncomfortable and resolve miscommunications. Similar to the challenger, it can be played by a founder or delegated to someone on the team. A caveat that founders will always have to mediate decisions to a certain extent — especially at later stages when they need to create a shared understanding between different stakeholders and manage communication between departments.
These roles can be played by founders or delegated to other leadership team members, but are essential for tackling the challenges that arise when a company starts to scale:
- Series A
The biggest issue for startups at Series A is that the company does not have the right organizational design to be able to scale further down the line. This is mitigated by the strategist and mediator, who work together to plan and implement effective structures, while the challenger questions potential flaws in the design.
- Series B
When the company grows to dozens or even hundreds of employees and is growing quickly, communication between teams can break down, creating silos. This lack of coordination can be the difference between a good company and an exceptional one. In this case, the moodmaker fosters a culture of open communication, the challenger identifies coordination issues, and the mediator facilitates solutions across teams.
Putting it into practice
As you start growing mid-level management, thinking about skills in this kind of systematic way becomes more crucial. This is because the best founders often play these roles naturally, but they are usually not aware they are doing so. As they start delegating more, therefore, they don’t always think consciously about who will play these specific roles and then struggle to diagnose the cause when things aren’t going as expected.
Having this lens also helps founders identify where they can be hands-off and where they need to be hands-on. Delegating the right things effectively is the most crucial part of a founder’s job when scaling - and this framework can help to do that right.
Next time you're about to make a challenging decision or in a crucial meeting — whether this is face-to-face, a call, or an informal group chat — observe which roles you and your team members naturally play. Ask yourself:
- Which role am I defaulting to?
- What roles are missing from our discussion?
- How can I step into an unfamiliar role to address a current challenge?
Keep in mind that this framework can also be used within departments. This internal analysis framework should be kept in mind in forming teams. The same leadership roles are needed at the department level, so you can share this framework with your high-potential leaders to help them form their own teams and grow.
Remember, your company is much more than the sum of all the positions within it. By consciously cultivating these six roles within your leadership team or even in other teams across the business, you're not just filling seats — you're building a dynamic, adaptable group of people capable of steering your startup through its most significant challenges. In the fast-paced world of startups, wearing multiple hats isn't just a necessity - it's an art.
If anyone else uses a similar framework or has validating or non-validating examples of this, we would love to hear from you: mehmet@bekventures.com
