Startups Stack Exchange Archive

What job title to put on business cards before founding?

• posted by: Michael Schumacher on 2016-06-09
• tagged: b2b, germany
• score: 6

I am part of a team of three people that received a one year grant for working out a business plan for our business idea for a software product. We are allowed to contact potential customers and develop products during this time, to start head first into market after founding a company near the end of that year of funding.

Currently we want to find potential customers to cooperate with them as pilot partners during the initial implementation. One venue for this is to visit industry conferences in our field of business.

Our problem is that we don’t know which job title to put on our business cards as there is no company yet. We are definitely working for example as software developers but our income is paid as a “scholarship” from the grant so there is no job title connected with that: officially we only have to develop the business plan.

We thought about several different titles but there were always some caveats:

• C…O: too “big” for a (not yet founded) 3 people company
• Lead Developer: on its own this title might make people think they are not talking to decision makers
• (Co-)Founder: there is nothing founded yet so this might be misleading
• (Co-)Owner: sounds like we are/were not part of the founding process

Due to the small size of our group and the early phase of the project we don’t have clear boundaries who is doing what, basically everyone does everything, although everyone does some tasks more than the others.

Answer 9436

• posted by: Rafał Bill on 2016-06-09
• score: 6

co-founder is still good - you all have founded (started) project so it is accurate name.

Lead developer is a nice name, however, if there are three of you, I will recommend:

• team developer for leader as it is exactly what a leader does - developing team

• business developer for a person who works on business model, market, etc.

• technology (could be software or hardware depending on case) developer - it is rather obvious ;)

I don’t know if it covers all your tasks - you can think of more by yourselves

Answer 11959

• posted by: JonnyZoo on 2017-01-21
• score: 0

Perhaps there is a simple solution for this:

Use your field of activities instead of the job titles. e.g. Development, Sales, Operations

• use the Cofounder-tag if you want to. Basically in germany you already have a founded a GbR by doing a project together with the goal to build a company. Others will appreciate to see they are talking to one of the founders.

As a founder from germany (and know several EXIST-Teams): clarify your responsibilities! This is a very important step. All things should be assigned to the respective person (one person…) Especially in the early stage this is crucial to avoid failure. Important tasks otherwise will be lost or neglected…

Last but not least: After this process one of you must have the “Sales” tag on his business card! (and do this job >50% of the time) This is very important for mentors, coaches, advisory persons and investors. (and for your business)

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