Titles are a form of compensation.
When you are a cash-strapped startup, especially in a domain that's not particularly lucrative, you pay people with titles.
If this incident hadn't happened, these folks could have proudly claimed that they were the CTO/COO/CPO etc of Shadow Inc on their LinkedIns and whatever article BuzzFeed/Forbes wrote about them.
If this incident hadn't happened, these folks could have proudly claimed that they were the CTO/COO/CPO etc of Shadow Inc on their LinkedIns and whatever article BuzzFeed/Forbes wrote about them.