The problem with this is you don't really have a company until you have a product to sell. And not all products can support companies. The roles in the company have to orient around the product. Product has to come first.
The mentality that important decisions within a new company boil down to which friend gets which corresponding C-level title is just trivial to me. You don't have a product and you're wasting time on the unimportant things. Literally, your startup needs a CEO to guide the ship and a team who can help build the product. Not a CEO, a COO, CTO, CMO, a Director of Engineering, a SVP of Marketing, and who knows what other fancy titles you can come up with.
Product is king. Without a product, you don't have customers nor revenue.
I think the title is catchy, but not in tune with the message of the article. The article would be more accurately titled "The role of the CEO in the first three stages of a company's lifecycle".
I would say that the first job of a CEO is building the company, the second job is building the product. If I have time after all of my other priorities were done, then I would help with the product (as in commit code, create or collab on a design or product workflow, etc.). The title CEO isn't just a random arrangement of letters: sure, it's fine to be part of the product in the beginning when there's only a couple or few people, but once it moves beyond that (and not at the 20 person level like this post says) the CEO should really trust that the CTO and the product team can do their job while the CEO handles all the other non-product aspects.