What Does a COO Do at an Early-Stage Startup? Allie Fleder on How COO Roles Vary

From the Podcast

This article is based on a conversation from Allie Fleder, COO at SimplyWise on Between Two COO's. Listen to the full episode →

The COO job description at a startup rarely matches reality. You walk in expecting to run internal operations, build budgets, and develop strategy. Three weeks later you are Googling "what is SEO," doing live interviews on local Fox stations, and delivering suitcases across London with blood running down your face. That gap between expectation and execution is where the real work of a chief operating officer lives, and it is exactly what Allie Fleder experienced as COO at SimplyWise.

What Does a COO Do at an Early-Stage Startup?

Ask ten COOs what they do and you will get ten different answers. The COO role description at a Series A startup looks nothing like the one at a Fortune 500 company, and Allie Fleder's experience at SimplyWise illustrates why. When she joined the fintech company, CEO Sam essentially handed her the entire business minus engineering: accounting, finance, HR, customer support, recruiting, legal, product, and business development. Fleder's response was straightforward.

"I'm writing down everything and I was like, so the business. What would my title possibly be? And he was like, what do you want it to be? And we both agreed that COO was probably the best catch-all term."

That catch-all nature is the defining feature of what a COO does at a startup. You are not a specialized executive overseeing a single function. You are the operational generalist who fills every gap the CEO and CTO cannot cover. As Fleder put it on a recent episode of Between Two COOs, her role changed roughly every three to four weeks as the company's strategy evolved. One month she was the de facto head of SEO. The next she was running customer support seven days a week. The constants were finance, recruiting, and legal, but the daily reality was constant adaptation.

For operations leaders evaluating a COO opportunity at an early-stage company, this is the honest picture. The chief operating officer duties at a startup are defined less by an org chart and more by whatever the business needs most urgently right now.

The CEO-COO Relationship: Why Fit Matters More Than Function

When host Michael Koenig asked Fleder for advice she would give a new COO, her first answer had nothing to do with operations. It was about the relationship with the CEO.

"I do think it's really critical to find a CEO that you really trust and respect and that you work very well with. I am great at what he is not good at. He is great at what I am not good at. There's just a lot of give and take."

This is a pattern that surfaces in nearly every episode of Between Two COOs. Cameron Herold explored the CEO-COO dynamic in depth in his conversation about delegation and leadership. The CEO and COO relationship is the load-bearing wall of the entire organization. When there is trust and direct communication, the COO can move fast and make judgment calls without running every decision up the chain. When that trust is absent, the role becomes political, slow, and ultimately unsustainable.

Fleder described her dynamic with SimplyWise CEO Sam as complementary rather than overlapping. She did not need his permission to take initiative on customer support or SEO. He trusted her to own the problem and report back. That level of autonomy is what separates a high-functioning COO role from someone who is effectively a senior project manager with a fancy title. If you are interviewing for a COO position and the CEO cannot clearly articulate what they need you to own or seems reluctant to give you real authority, treat that as a red flag. As Rich Wallach of Chopra Global explained on B2COOs, psychological safety and clear authority are foundational to an effective COO role.

How COO Roles Vary: The Generalist Advantage

Fleder's path to the COO chair was anything but conventional. She studied Latin American poetry in college, then became a political speechwriter, served as chief of staff at an NGO and think tank, earned an MBA, started a British travel company, and eventually landed in fintech. It is a resume that makes no sense on paper and perfect sense in practice.

"I think I'm quite suited to this early stage startup COO because I am very much a generalist. Being at an early stage company, I think everyone is in a way a generalist, but I do think that is the most true for a COO."

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of how COO roles vary across companies. At later-stage organizations, the COO often has deep functional expertise in operations, supply chain, or finance. At startups, the most valuable COO is someone who can learn fast and context-switch without breaking stride. Fleder went from zero SEO knowledge to leading the company's growth strategy in under a month. She went from internal operations planning to doing PR interviews on local television within weeks.

The generalist advantage is not about being mediocre at everything. It is about having the learning velocity and adaptability to become competent enough, fast enough, in whatever the business needs. That is a fundamentally different skill set than what you find in a traditional COO role description, and it explains why so many startup COOs come from unconventional backgrounds like consulting, chief of staff roles, or even speechwriting. For a deeper dive into how COOs manage remote teams specifically, Darren Murph of GitLab shared his remote operations playbook on the podcast.

Creating Clarity When There Is No Roadmap

One of the most practical insights from the conversation was how Fleder approached the ambiguity that defines early-stage startups. In her first week at SimplyWise, before she even started on the SEO work that would consume her first months, she sat down with the CEO and insisted they define the company's mission.

"We didn't have a mission for the company at that time. And I was like, this feels like a really critical thing before we think about hiring, before we think about going much further, that we nail this down together."

The mission became her north star. When the product shifted, when the marketing strategy changed, when she was zooming in and out between tactical execution and strategic thinking, the mission kept her grounded. It is a simple idea that most startups skip in the rush to build and ship.

Fleder also shared a nuanced take on communication during uncertainty. Over-communicating is generally the right instinct, but she learned that stream-of-consciousness transparency with the entire team can actually increase anxiety rather than reduce it. The better approach is to process ambiguity at the leadership level first, then deliver a unified message to the team, even if that message is honest about the uncertainty.

"Helping guide people in one direction, even if that message is like, look, this is where we are right now, there is some uncertainty, things are changing... that feels pretty critical."

For COOs navigating a pivot or a period of strategic uncertainty, this is an important calibration. Transparency does not mean thinking out loud in front of the entire company. It means giving the team enough context to stay focused while you work through the ambiguity behind the scenes.

Don't Reinvent the Wheel (Save Your Energy for the Hard Stuff)

Fleder's final piece of advice was deceptively simple: stop rebuilding things that already exist. She admitted spending her first six months recreating employee handbooks, designing recruiting email templates from scratch, and researching best practices for quarterly investor reports, all of which had readily available templates.

"There is so much ambiguity in a startup. And so much of your job will be in ambiguity where there are no answers and there is no roadmap. There's no playbook. There is no template. So for the stuff that does have templates, for the more traditional operational stuff, utilize those templates."

This is a resource allocation argument disguised as practical advice. Every hour you spend perfecting a rejection email template is an hour you are not spending on the genuinely novel problems that only you can solve. Investors, other COOs, and peer networks are all sources for operational templates. Use them. Your time as COO is too expensive and too scarce to spend on solved problems.

She also emphasized the value of building a peer network. Fleder cold-messaged roughly twenty COOs on LinkedIn when she started her role. Two responded. Both gave her different but valuable perspectives. She later created a Slack community for female founders that became one of her most important professional lifelines. The isolation of the COO role, especially at startups, is real. Building connections with other operators is not optional.

The COO role at an early-stage startup is equal parts operator, strategist, learner, and firefighter. Allie Fleder's experience at SimplyWise shows that the best COOs are not the ones with the most polished resumes. They are the ones who can absorb ambiguity, learn at speed, and keep the team pointed in the same direction even when the map keeps changing. If this resonated, subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more frameworks like this every Tuesday, and follow Between Two COOs on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so you don't miss the next conversation.

FAQ

What does a COO do at a startup?

At an early-stage startup, the COO typically owns everything outside of engineering: finance, HR, recruiting, legal, customer support, and often marketing or business development. The role changes frequently as the company's strategy evolves, making adaptability and learning speed the most important COO skills. Unlike a COO at a large corporation who manages established systems, a startup COO builds those systems from scratch while simultaneously fighting fires.

How do COO roles vary between startups and large companies?

At large companies, the COO usually has deep expertise in a specific operational domain and manages well-defined teams and processes. At startups, the COO is a generalist who fills whatever gaps the CEO and technical co-founders cannot cover. The startup COO role changes on a weekly or monthly cycle as the company's priorities shift, whereas a Fortune 500 COO role tends to be more stable and specialized.

What is the most important quality for a startup COO?

According to Allie Fleder, COO at SimplyWise, the most critical factor is the relationship with the CEO. Trust, direct communication, and complementary skill sets are non-negotiable. Beyond that, the ability to learn quickly, tolerate ambiguity, and context-switch between tactical execution and strategic thinking separates effective startup COOs from those who struggle in the role.

How should a new COO create clarity at an early-stage company?

Start by defining the company mission with the CEO and founding team. This gives every subsequent decision a reference point. From there, over-communicate with the team, but process strategic ambiguity at the leadership level first before sharing a unified message. Avoid stream-of-consciousness transparency, which can increase anxiety rather than reduce it.

What advice would experienced COOs give to someone starting the role?

Three key pieces of advice from experienced COOs: First, make sure the CEO-COO fit is strong before accepting the role. Second, build a peer network of other COOs and operators immediately since the role can be isolating. Third, do not waste time reinventing operational templates that already exist. Save your creative energy for the novel problems where there is no playbook.

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