Startup COOs: What do they do?

I really enjoyed this post about what startupo COOs do. It was interesting because it wasn’t just opinion, there was also data. I particularly enjoyed the evolution of the author’s role over time, and the percentage of COOs that owned various responsibilities. To be fair, it was a small set of respondents in one geographic area, but still interesting.

However, the money quote was:

I actually have [simple way] of explaining what I do, and I would sum it up this way: taking things off my CEO’s plate, and figuring out how to thoughtfully scale the company.

Of course every company’s different, but I’ve seen the pattern of a visionary and an operator in a couple of companies, and it’s powerful.