Why not add ‘master of your domain’ while you are at it.  Really?  Ask yourself, do I need all of those titles?  I really doubt it, especially if you are involved in a startup.  Here at Big in Japan we decided to allow employees to pick their own title (i.e. as long as it wasn’t traditional).  For example, my title is Social Ninja and our lead developer is Bento Boxer.  The point was, in a startup (especially early on) titles can get in the way of the fact that everyone needs to be able and willing to do anything.  Just because you have a C or V in your title doesn’t mean you don’t have to take the trash out or haul boxes.

Titles can be an even trickier subject when you are trying to raise money.  Rick Segal reminded me of the secret language/code venture capital folks use in his post titled, “VC Hot Questions“.  Rick is running the Blackberry Partners Fund and as a result he and his partner VCs are hearing more than their share of pitches from entrepreneurs.  Rick shared a few of the ‘third rail’ questions his partners have been asking entrepreneurs and I thought it might be helpful to post them here:

“Help me understand how the current management team gets the company to 50MM a year in revenue?”

“Do you think you and your team are strong enough to get it over the finish line?”

“What’s the track record of your management team with respect to successful exits?”

Do you know what the REAL question that was asked?  Venture capital folks ask it in a hundred different ways, but there is only one answer they are looking for.  The question is, less subtly, “are you willing to step down as CEO at some point?”  Ricks suggest avoiding the problem by simply using the title “founder” and if you are asked “who is the CEO” to simply say, “Look, I’m the founder and we’re running a million miles an hour towards being successful as you can see here… The objective is to find a financial partner and a solid board to help me, as the founder, grow the management team and knock this baby out of the park.” I advise, as does Rick, only to say this if you believe the statement.  The truth is even Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell were replaced as CEO…  (of course you never know, Jobs and Dell got their jobs back - maybe you will too).