[tzhenghao]

> In many cases, however, that’s not what happens, and the CTO was basically the smartest person with a CS degree standing close to the CEO when the company was formed. The end result is that a lot of startups wind up giving a huge chunk of equity to someone who is essentially doing a job a semi-decent engineer could have done.

I think fundamentally (early stage) CEOs are judged the same way as well right? First time founders, especially the CEO, having to figure out sales and GTM etc. - very rarely do they get it right the first time. I certainly didn't. That's the risk of running a startup and investing in a startup. As the company scales, both CEO and CTO have to grow into their "new" roles every 6-18 months anyway. So, it's weird to single out the CTO, or really any founding member at all for "cap table dead weight".