Hot take: A COO who does not have equity is a lapdog
What's the point of being a COO without any equity whatsoever? I doubt purely monetary compensation should warrant that kind of responsibility without any equity whatsoever unless the company is on a serious downwards trajectory.
Yep, that would be super weird if the COO does not have any equity Then the CEO just picked them because they themselves have a lot of power but want to refrain from doing the hard work
The COO will never have a decent say at any table - would be a very weird dynamic
And yet, that's the case in the startup where I work. The previous COO was an amicable person and he departed because the founder wouldn't dilute any percentage of his equity. And here we are now, a COO whose interests lies in watching over the amount of washroom breaks each developer takes and beating the bush that AI is coming, be productive than making the workplace better or making the work efficient.
Contd: So you will just have a line of COOs who won't be deserving of the designation in the first place filling up the seat, rather than an actually impactful one i.e. a lapdog to thr CEO
COO with or without equity are lapdogs. Operations head is the quintessentinal dobhi ka kutta.
