Chief of Staff vs. Business Operations: Which Role Does Your Startup Need First?

If you're a founder at a Series A or B company, you've probably hit the point where you can't do everything yourself anymore. The fundraise closed, headcount is climbing, and suddenly you're spending more time in internal meetings than talking to customers. You need to hire someone to take things off your plate—but what's the right role?

Two titles come up constantly: Chief of Staff and Head of Business Operations (or Biz Ops). They sound similar, and in some companies, they overlap. But they're fundamentally different roles that solve different problems. Hiring the wrong one can set you back months.

Here's how to think through the decision.

What a Chief of Staff Actually Does

A Chief of Staff is an extension of the CEO. The role exists to multiply the effectiveness of the founder or executive they support. Day to day, this might include running the weekly leadership meeting, preparing board materials, driving a strategic initiative that doesn't have a clear home, or simply being a sounding board for decisions.

The best Chiefs of Staff have high judgment and can context-switch constantly. They're often generalists by nature—comfortable jumping from a compensation question to a product strategy debate to a vendor negotiation in the same afternoon. They tend to operate with a lot of ambiguity and thrive when they're close to the center of decision-making.

The role is inherently temporary in its scope. A great Chief of Staff will work themselves out of specific responsibilities by building processes, hiring the right people, or handing off initiatives once they're stable. Then they move on to the next high-priority problem.

What Business Operations Actually Does

Business Operations, by contrast, is about building the systems and processes that make the company run. A Head of Biz Ops typically owns cross-functional projects, internal tools and workflows, metrics and reporting, and operational planning like OKRs or annual planning cycles.

Where a Chief of Staff might identify that the company needs a better planning process, a Biz Ops lead will design, implement, and maintain that process quarter after quarter. The role is more persistent and systems-oriented. It's less about multiplying a single executive and more about multiplying the effectiveness of the entire organization.

Biz Ops professionals often come from consulting or banking backgrounds and have strong analytical skills. They're comfortable building models, writing documentation, and rolling out new tools. They tend to be more process-driven and less reactive than a typical Chief of Staff.

The Core Tradeoff

The simplest way to think about it: Chief of Staff solves for CEO leverage. Business Operations solves for organizational leverage.

If your biggest bottleneck is your own time and attention as a founder—you're the one who has to be in every meeting, approve every decision, and keep every initiative moving - then a Chief of Staff can directly relieve that pressure.

If your biggest bottleneck is that the company lacks operational infrastructure—planning is ad hoc, teams don't have visibility into each other's work, and nothing is documented - then you need someone building systems, not someone shadowing you.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Where is the pain most acute?

Think about the last month. Were most of your frustrations about your own bandwidth (too many meetings, too many decisions, not enough time to think strategically)? Or were they about organizational dysfunction (teams stepping on each other, information not flowing, processes breaking as you scale)?

How much ambiguity can you tolerate in the role?

A Chief of Staff role is inherently fluid. The job description will change every quarter as priorities shift. If you need someone who can own a consistent set of responsibilities and build on them over time, Biz Ops is a better fit.

What's your company stage?

At the seed or early Series A stage, many founders hire a Chief of Staff as their first operational hire because the company isn't big enough to need dedicated systems yet - what it needs is someone who can help the CEO move faster. By Series B or C, as the organization grows more complex, the need for true Biz Ops infrastructure becomes more pressing.

Do you have other operational leaders in place?

If you already have strong functional leaders (a capable Head of Finance, a seasoned VP of People), a Chief of Staff might be redundant—those leaders can own their domains, and what you need is someone to tie the operational threads together. But if you're still building out your leadership team, a Chief of Staff can serve as a bridge.

When Companies Get This Wrong

The most common mistake we see is hiring a Chief of Staff and expecting them to build long-term operational systems. Chiefs of Staff are typically great at driving projects to completion, but they're not always wired to maintain and iterate on processes over time. You end up with a planning process that works for one quarter and then falls apart because no one is owning it persistently.

The inverse mistake is hiring a Biz Ops lead and expecting them to serve as your thought partner and proxy in executive discussions. Biz Ops professionals are often more comfortable behind the scenes, building the machinery. Putting them in a role that requires constant executive interaction and high-stakes judgment calls can be a mismatch.

The Hybrid Path

Some companies try to combine the roles, hiring someone with a title like "Chief of Staff & Business Operations." This can work at earlier stages when the scope is small enough for one person to handle both. But as the company scales, the roles tend to diverge. The CEO-leverage work and the systems-building work both expand, and it becomes hard for one person to do both well.

If you're considering a hybrid role, be honest about which part of the job is the higher priority. That will help you find the right candidate and set appropriate expectations.

Making the Decision

There's no universal right answer - it depends on your specific situation. But here's a simple framework:

Hire a Chief of Staff first if you're pre-Series B, your leadership team is still thin, and your personal bandwidth is the main constraint on company velocity. Look for someone with high judgment, strong communication skills, and comfort with ambiguity.

Hire a Head of Biz Ops first if you're at Series B or beyond, you have a leadership team in place, and the main constraint is organizational coordination and process. Look for someone with strong analytical skills, systems thinking, and a track record of building operational infrastructure.

And if you're not sure? Talk to founders who've made both hires. Ask what they wish they'd known. The right sequencing can accelerate your growth; the wrong sequencing can cost you a year.

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Omna Search helps high-growth startups hire Chiefs of Staff, Biz Ops leaders, and other operational talent. If you're thinking through this decision, we'd love to talk.

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