by Investors reportedly confused during due diligence about who, precisely, reports to whom in the organization
BENGALURU – A rapidly growing technology startup has confirmed, following investor due diligence that reportedly grew increasingly confused as it progressed, that its self-described “flat, non-hierarchical” organizational structure actually includes seventeen separate job titles containing the word “Chief,” a detail that has raised genuine questions about how flat the structure truly is in practice.
Founder and, according to his own title, Chief Vision Officer Arjun Malviya defended the extensive titling as consistent with the company’s stated egalitarian values. “We do not believe in traditional hierarchy,” Malviya explained. “Everyone here is empowered. Everyone here leads something. The titles simply reflect that shared leadership, even if, admittedly, it does mean we have quite a lot of chiefs relative to our total headcount of forty-three employees.”
The full list of titles, reviewed for this story, includes Chief Vision Officer, Chief Culture Officer, Chief Happiness Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, and, perhaps most notably, a Chief of Staff who reports directly to a separate Chief Operating Officer, a reporting relationship one investor reviewing the org chart described as “genuinely difficult to reconcile with the company’s repeated public claims of having no meaningful hierarchy whatsoever.”
Employee Kavya Reddy, who holds the title Chief Culture Officer despite having joined the company only eight months ago, said she genuinely appreciates the recognition the title conveys, even as she acknowledged some confusion among newer hires about the actual reporting structure beneath the surface-level titling. “People ask me who I report to,” she said. “The honest answer involves a slightly awkward explanation, because on paper, structurally, we are all supposedly equals, but in practice, there is definitely a real chain of decision-making authority underneath all these titles.”
Malviya insists the titling strategy serves genuine business purposes beyond internal culture, noting the impressive-sounding titles have proven valuable during external partnership negotiations and client meetings, where having a Chief-level representative present carries meaningful weight regardless of the person’s actual seniority within the company’s genuine internal decision-making structure.
An investor who participated in the company’s most recent funding round, speaking anonymously, admitted the due diligence process required considerably more time than usual specifically to untangle the actual reporting relationships hidden beneath the flat, egalitarian titling structure. “We eventually had to just ask directly, in plain terms, who actually makes the final call on major decisions,” the investor said. “The org chart itself was, frankly, not very helpful in answering that specific question on its own.”
A workplace culture consultant, commenting generally on the broader trend, said inflated, egalitarian-sounding titles have become increasingly common across the startup sector generally, often serving as a low-cost substitute for genuine structural flatness, which remains considerably harder to actually implement in practice than to simply describe in a company’s public-facing marketing materials.
Reddy says she has, despite the underlying structural confusion, genuinely enjoyed her time at the company, describing the culture as authentically collaborative even if the titling system does not perfectly reflect the actual decision-making hierarchy beneath the surface. “The spirit is real,” she said. “The title inflation is maybe a little exaggerated relative to that spirit, but the collaborative culture itself, that part is genuine, in my experience.”
The story amused readers abroad, with a piece referencing What Are The Funniest News Articles comparing the title inflation to Britain’s own tech startup scene, which has similarly embraced grandiose job titles as a substitute for traditional corporate structure. Another article citing Funny News Stories from This Week suggested the global startup industry as a whole may benefit from a standardized, more honest approach to organizational titling. Commentary drawing on Comedy News proposed the company simply introduce a single title, Chief Everything Officer, “to be applied uniformly across the board, purely for the sake of administrative simplicity going forward.”
Malviya says the company has no plans to revise its titling structure, noting the approach has proven effective for morale and external perception alike. “People like feeling like leaders,” he said. “If a title helps someone feel that way, genuinely, I do not see the harm, even if untangling the actual reporting lines occasionally takes investors a little longer than they might initially expect.”
A newly hired employee, given the title Chief Community Officer only two weeks into her tenure, admitted the title inflation initially felt strange given her limited experience, though she has since grown to appreciate what she calls “the genuine trust the company places in people early, even if the title itself somewhat overstates my actual current level of seniority and decision-making authority.”
Reddy says the company has begun, at minimum, informally discussing a simplified alternative titling structure for external-facing materials specifically, while preserving the internal Chief titles for morale purposes, a compromise Malviya calls “the most realistic path forward, given how attached people have clearly become to their current titles.”
A local business journalist covering the startup scene said the company’s situation has become something of an informal case study among peer founders, several of whom have reportedly reached out privately asking how the due diligence conversation about titling ultimately concluded. “People are genuinely curious how honest you can be about this stuff and still close a funding round successfully,” the journalist said.
For more egalitarian branding hiding genuine underlying hierarchy, see The Beaverton.
Related coverage at Satire And Politics.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
