Co-Founder Roles in Startup

Do the three of you have experience setting up and running a startup? If not, then do not try to precisely define equal responsibilities because, as you’ve already learned, you’ll fail. Agree on each other’s areas of responsibility, how success will be measured by the other two founders (until you have a board), and start executing. Agree on terms that two of the founders can use to terminate the other founder with appropriate compensation and guarantee of equity to that point. Otherwise you’re just going to spin wheels and get frustrated with each other.

Specifically: at the outset, with no idea of what you’re building, at best the sales and marketing founders are going to be twiddling their fingers in their traditional roles. So maybe task them either with help developing the solution or figuring out operations you’ll need later on even if those are outside their normal areas of responsibility. Whoever the tech founder is will be under the gun to build the thing and figure out operations for the thing, hand off anything that isn’t building the thing to the other co-founders until the thing is built.

Precise roles and responsibilities at this stage can kill startups. Sometimes there’s going to be a mess on the floor that needs mopped. Doesn’t matter whose “official” responsibility it is, just get the mess cleaned up and move on. If you burn time and capital bickering over who’s responsible you won’t succeed.

It depends a lot on how you got together in the first place. Why did your startup need three co-founders? What was the expectation when you got together? Why do "you" need to define cofounder responsibilities equally? Usually the structure should be set up in the way the person who contributes the most ends up with more equity.