This is partly the reason I didn't take the CTO title when I joined a startup years ago. They gave me the flexibility to essentially pick my own title; I eventually settled on "Director, Software Development".

In addition to avoiding the friction, I had hired (and rejected) several "CEOs" for entry-level student tech-support jobs several years previous, and wanted to avoid the presumptions that went along with the title. I was young, and wanted to be taken seriously when I introduced myself. "CTO" of a company no one had heard of didn't communicate that.