Notes ·
Five Lines That Belong In Every Working Contract
A working contract between a CEO and a CTO is not a legal document. It is a short paragraph that names the failure modes you have already met.
Eun-Bi Han · Founder alignment / Working contracts / Mediation
When a CEO and a CTO start sending each other recap docs after every meeting, alignment is gone. The recap doc is the symptom; the missing working contract is the cause. The fix is shorter than people expect.
Five lines, in this order, repair most early-stage founder friction. First, a sentence that names who is the final decision-maker on technical hires above a stated level. Second, a sentence that defines the cadence and forum for product disagreements. Third, a sentence that lists the topics that do not get re-litigated within the same quarter. Fourth, a sentence that names the escalation route when one of you is privately frustrated. Fifth, a sentence that defines when the contract itself gets reviewed.
Cohorts that rehearse these five lines live tend to write a sixth line on their own; the sixth line is usually the most personal and the most useful. We do not include it in the template because the value of the sixth line comes from being chosen rather than received.