My startup crossed $2M/yr and now co-founder is going for a power grab

my startup had multiple CTO's at some point, it's not a bad solution either, have the CEO name two CTO's

Read the book "extreme ownership". Meditate on it for a couple days. Try to convince your CEO to read it too. It will pay dividends.

Read "the thin book of trust" as well since you don't trust them.

From an outside very detached perspective, it sounds like you fancy yourself CTO in all but title and this other person getting that title puts them above you on the dominance hierarchy for political rather than meritocratic reasons.

Clearly it's your CEO's responsibility to weigh in on this and it's an extreme (and I mean absolutely extreme) dereliction of their duties, a dereliction you should expect more of later. Where there's smoke...

I would definitely set your expectations early, so the path of least resistance for everyone is not the other person becoming CTO. It sounds right now you haven't made it clear that you will feel absolutely disrespected if they become CTO to a point where you will likely be too demoralized to continue (and if they become CTO, it will eat at you day after day, week after week, until you are cynical and useless, and at that point this other person will have completely dominated you, and you will have to come to terms with having submitted to someone else because they played politics better than you).

The CUXO's ambition not being tempered by reality while retaining such large ownership is an even bigger problem than your seemingly imminent demoralization.

> he said he deserved it because he setup the slack and gmail instances so that makes him CTO.

This is pretty extreme technical immaturity that shows lack of a greater understanding of what a CTO does and is.

I think the CEO needs a come to Jesus talk. I think you need to turn what you have explained as a "you vs him" problem into an "us vs the problem" problem. I think taking everything you've said at face value, the person suggesting "chief of product" for their title while you become CTO is probably what makes sense.

If I were you I would probably be feeling pretty troubled by a CEO avoiding their responsibilities, and hiring a person you explicitly don't trust.

I would also take a look at nonviolent communication (because what you say right now would definitely manifest as violent communication). If you express what you express right now, you will make CUXO and CEO defensive and if they are defensive, you (everyone really) have lost.

I would also consider asking the following in a probably more friendly way "how would you feel if you had 8 reports and made most of the technical direction decisions, and then somebody with 2 reports and significantly smaller technical contribution were named CTO?"

Titles are position within the dominance hierarchy, so they are very important. They determine who the default winners are in the game of politics.

When self interested people are in high authority positions, it hurts the company. When company interested people are in high authority positions, that is a small short term cost to leadership (because those people will be loyal to the company rather than the person above them) but a long term boon.

Was going to suggest the same.

You can both then be "CTO" for credit-taking purposes, have your own specialisations, and should anyone ask for references later, it checks out too.