A startup has many challenges – market, cash flow, competition, support, hack attacks, attrition, power cut, hunt for the perfect coffee – add one more to the long list – Business Card Title.
Today, Sangeeta and I had a chat on IM ( yes we are in the same office – long story 🙂 ) regarding what will be the title. We cannot have traditional roles like CxO, X Manager etc. – as in a startup you have to specifically generalize.
When we started ApartmentAdda, I had a short title on my Business card – Chief. – with a period at the end. I was ragged for 15 minutes by one committee when I had gone for a demo. Also later Sachin who was our Product Innovation Lead – used to tease me – Chief What?
So when we went for a reprint had it printed as Chief, Technology. That explains one aspect of my job – the primary role. But there are lot other things I handle daily – support, IS, patching, backups, opening office, UPS rationing, analytics, accounting, server, domain renewals, organize team outings…
Over to Sangeeta. She does Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Support and lot other things like – hunting for the perfect coffee, head hunting, accounting, Weekly quicksters ( check our page on http://facebook.com/apartmentadda ).
Taking all the factors into consideration – customers,partners,vendors,investors – we finally decided to have functional titles based on our primary roles.
This will be the 3rd reprint of my card and the Title is a little bigger than last years. Curious to know? Will do the handshake next time we meet and give my card 🙂
So – what are the titles in your startup/organization ?
Couple of tweets I received on this :
