it would be an alarm bell (big one) if none of the founders has a technical background. When you join a new group of people who you have no history with it, then it takes some time to build trust (battles fought together under which bonding can occur) and learn their motives.
it has helped me a great deal to assess a new situation and figure out whether the non-tech founders and decision makers in the firm are actually on the ball doing their part.
Understanding their role (what is their strategy in finding product market fit) is crucial in evaluating "your bosses" performance and ultimately if whether the team and product can make it post MVP.
Just focusing on MVP is a fallacy IMVHO because it lets them isolate you (the engineer) into sticking to your niche within the org. The problems then start once you have the MVP and bosses then realizes they have missed all the steps (because they didn't know and unlike you are still learning the hard way how to do things) and you as a team are actually nowhere. It always ends in tears unless all of you are already at eye-level.
Tears is best case scenario. OP should be reviewing his/her paperwork with an attorney at this point. I fully expect the employment documents to have errors or vagueness conveniently located in places that would benefit the business.
I would make it clear for other founders that their role in the pre-product startup is to
1) continuously (daily) interview potential customers BEFORE the MVP is ready (and document their findings) so that you as a team have clear understanding what customers actually need
2) ensure enough financing that the product and team can be build
3) help you in recruiting more developers
Understanding customers
I once did a startup in a similar setup (2 non-technical founders, me as a single technical founder) and the biggest mistake was 2 non-technical founders were waiting for MVP to be ready before they really started to approach customers. I tried to push them to do more customer interviews, but they looked it purely from sales perspective and thought we didn't yet have anything to sell. We effectively build the wrong thing that nobody wanted and they started to lose interest when they realized that the MVP doesn't sell on it's own without significant iteration.
Hiring
Also, although building MVP quickly is an important step so that you can start to collect better customer feedback in a search for product-market fit, remember that building a team is as critical. Even if you don't have money to hire engineers at this point, you need to start to build hiring pipeline early. It is very hard as a single developer to effectively take care of both bug fixing, devops and new feature development when you start to get customers.
We already have the first version of the app ready and the founders have been talking to customers, but not as much as I expected. Hiring engineers is a bit difficult since we are not making any revenue yet. The only option is to give equity, I suppose.
> Hiring engineers is a bit difficult since we are not making any revenue yet. The only option is to give equity, I suppose.
Give up equity to raise money to hire and scale.
Otherwise, raise money preselling the product to scale the company, but this likely chains you to customers that you may find later would be better with their own consultants.
And if this means you're not getting paid, 20% (or 50%) of 0 and $12k opportunity cost is $144k/year investment
I second this. It sounds like you're getting ripped off, especially if you're the only developer. You'll basically be the one to deliver the product or initiate it.
Ya, renegotiate now. I was in the exact a similar situation 4 years ago, same exact split. Co-founders we're both neurosurgeons from an ivy league. The company was medical related, but not really. Them being neurosurgeons brought nothing to the table except connections to other doctors.
Long story short, I worked 6 months, they sat around being neurosurgeons all day. They found a buddy to invest seed round at a poor valuation, basically sold the company.
My mistakes were: working on it too long without an agreement, not asking for enough when we did get an agreement, poor negotiation when seed was being done, and not knowing their motives for doing a company. They wanted a check box for their resume, not to run a business (despite what they told.me and themselves)
If you're the engineer in a startup that's at all "technical", rather than a thin business layer over a CRUD db, then you're where the business is and the other two are remote!
Bail. You've done all the 'actually succeeding at stuff' by producing the MVP, they've done none of the actually succeeding at stuff by raising finance. Sorry :(
To clarify, in other responses, he has specified he won't be hiring anybody except with equity offers because there is not enough financing until they get revenue.
Bail. They haven't raised enough money or presold enough product.
What exactly does that mean? Do you expect your stake to go up or down in the future? Do you have it in writing that has been reviewed by your own lawyer? Because the reality may be 0%-50%-50% and you just don’t realise yet.
> It is 20%-40%-40%. 20% for me for now because I work remotely.
I have trouble following the logic there. If your remote status means you're significantly less valuable / productive than someone local (to the other founders), they should replace you with a local hire.
But if you're a right person for the job, then I can't think of any principled reason for you to accept less than 1/3, protected ownership of the company.
That being said, because this is a business relationship, IMO you're best served by viewing this dispassionately as a negotiation. It's hard to justify a particular level of ownership for you as being "fair", similarly to how it's hard to justify a particular price for a commodity as being "fair". So you might consider the following goal instead: try to maximize your equity + salary, within the constraints of (a) dealing honestly, and (b) keeping it a win-win-win proposition for you and the other two owners.
And, as others have said, prior to renegotiating, give some serious thought to the ways your 20% can become 0%. Even if your still in the honeymoon period with the other founders, there's a decent chance they, or other investors, will try to strip that away from you in the future. It sucks, but it's one of the painful lessons of startup life. Monetary stress or greed can turn many persons into unbelievable jerks.
Well, obviously you're going to be doing all the development, testing, sysadmin and office IT work until you get more staff, at which point interviewing will take a lot of your time. You need to be adequately good at all of these.
Less obviously you'll be making the technical decisions, and then having to work out where responsibility for these and "product" decisions lie.
It's not clear where the cash is coming from; are you all paying in? Did that decide the split? Who's getting paid and who's putting in "sweat equity"? You're also a founder, right?
Given your position you should entrench your status ASAP as "CTO" or similar title before you start hiring. You should decide how you feel about people getting hired "above" you (good or bad) and plan accordingly.
There will be at least one stand-up shouting argument early on. This is normal, but needs to be handled maturely - done successfully it will improve the business. Being the "remote" partner puts you at a disadvantage here.
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Everything will be your responsibility and your task. Everything will be "easy" according to non-technical people who will expect "trivial features" as seen on Gmail/Dropbox/Twitter/Linkedin.
I have been working in a startup for close to 2 yrs ,with myself being the only developer , although I have a small team trained to perform daily activities
I convinced another person to be the CEO and do the marketing, although we make only enough money to just sustain it has been a rich & different experience for a developer
In programming we get as many iterations to get our code ready, but many time we get only one chance to convince people. I will probably never be good at people management or marketing
Point is forget the money or the agreements are you convinced you are learing something new then continue ?? if your company becomes big or not people will recognize whatever you did
Chaos, no sleep, chaos, endless stream of changing requirements, you will be blamed for everything.
Just remember: the real bonuses will go to the managers, not you, they will get rid of you as soon as they will need to find someone to blame for their decisions.
And of course the non-technical managers will know that "everything is easy, you will do the new dropbox over the weekend, right" (however that's so easy that they cannot do it themselves).
Yes. I'm going to venture to say that if you sense this at all or you can already feel like you know that your co-workers / superiors aren't very tech savvy and you suspect they hired you to be a one-stop-shop to fix everything computer and technology related for them (that they don't know about themselves) than you need to, in painful detail, outline their expectations of you, your capabilities, what you can and can't do, what you think should be done, and also give ideas and plans for how to tackle the toughest things they expect as well as how you'll go about outsourcing things you don't know how to do / don't want to do / can't do from 3rd parties who absolutely can deliver those things.
Get ahead of the nightmare before it eats you alive.
EDIT: Since so many other people are echoing my sentiments I'll also add that if you feel like your superiors think along the lines of, "Good developers are a dime a dozen and you can be easily replaced.", than you need to start job hunting. I've met a few people who did IT or sales in server space / colocation, etc. and helped them on a few side projects / start-up ideas and I'll never forget how much money they wound up losing after trying to low ball me for work I did when they dropped that line on me, flat out, in the middle of me working on their websites, network, general IT stuff, and other apps / generic projects. They tried to renegotiate my payment amount and payment schedule in the middle of the contract after already signing it. Big mistake.
It felt so good to hold all the cards and power when they tried to flex that "I'm your boss and I can make or break your career / life right now." attitude. They thought they could easily replace a developer / technical person like changing shoes but they didn't realize that a lot of developers won't put up with this shit from the get go. Lots of people won't even give it a chance, they aren't willing to work with superiors who are learning how to treat technical folks. Be careful out there and don't allow your superiors to dictate your mood or happiness. It's not worth your time, effort, or the money because if you find yourself in that situation you can almost bet your aren't getting paid enough. You'll probably be doing the work of 2-3 or more professionals for people bringing in the money you should be making while doing next to no actual work that helps the company profit.
Another thing. If you do wind up leaving a company and you know they aren't paying you enough you can nearly bet that after you go and they try to fill your spot they'll attempt to fill it by paying someone LESS than they paid you. I've heard nightmare stories from recruiters / headhunters I've worked with who were tasked with trying to fill my shoes with companies who seriously thought I was wrong when I told them they were asking too much of me / paying me too little for the "bare minimum" they thought I was doing (multiple people's jobs as I said). People are crazy out there.
> you need to, in painful detail, outline their expectations of you, your capabilities, what you can and can't do, what you think should be done, and also give ideas and plans for how to tackle the toughest things they expect as well as how you'll go about outsourcing things you don't know how to do / don't want to do / can't do from 3rd parties who absolutely can deliver those things
Having been in OP's exact position, he/she will probably be, at the very least, threatened with termination in a highly unprofessional manner if this is asked. I'm talking under-the-breath threats to passive-aggressive actions designed to make OP's life a living hell. Non-tech founders are the worst and will do everything to make you feel in debt to them since they provided you with a job (aka an "amazing opportunity to disrupt XYZ field").
I definitely didn't approach it exactly how I wanted it to come off but I mean I'm not saying to go say this stuff verbatim to them but you have to take a stance where you are attempting to meet half way, work with them, and try to make them understand how you can best do your job. Especially if, like I said, the superiors are really not tech savvy folks.
Without some understanding in that realm it's going to be choppy seas.
Adding to this, once you quit/get fired you will want to get checked for mental health problems immediately. I quit a similar situation and entered a 6-8 month depression cycle where I couldn't even get out of bed some days. Also drained my savings since I wasn't working.
Be careful about being "typecast". You may find yourself doing work that is necessary but not something you'd want to focus on career-wise. However, everyone else may start thinking of you as the specialist for that work.
Example from my career - I joined a startup as a senior-level architect. There were only a few tech folks at the time and my background was databases, so I ended up doing a lot of the database work. It was something I was good at, but I considered it part of a past from which I was moving on.
Eventually I was typecast as an operational DBA - a tactical role rather than the strategic one I envisioned. When management decided to adjust my salary accordingly, I had to leave.
Lesson: Communicate to management all the technical roles that are required in your startup. Let them know which ones align with your own career path. Remind them that they eventually need to get others to fill the other roles. You will have to repeat this often, just not often enough to be a pain about it.
It's not YOUR startup. Your startup would mean 100% of ownership.
(from another answer)
> 20% for me for now because I work remotely.
Do you have any documentation for this 20% stake ownership? If not, you can be replaced in an instant.
Are these two founders in the same country? Yes, well expect to have decisions made without your input.
There is also the challenge of the other founders appreciating your input into the company. You are doing everything. They won't appreciate this and they won't see the amount of work either.
Non-technical founders know squat and they don't care either about how much time it takes to do things.
------
I've gone through this myself. I was a "founder" in 1 startup with a non-technical founder and before that I was a "small" equity holder in another company, which was founded by 3 non-technicals.
In both circumstances I was just an employee doing my job. No upside at all. I didn't come away with anything but experience in the respective industry.
------
If you are going to stay, then I suggest to learn how to implement the tech for this startup and in turn, can provide you with a springboard for your own startup and if this is the case. Ensure you are getting paid!
Jumping from this, even if OP is getting paid he/she should make sure they're not doing anything sketchy with their pay/tax documents. I've had to go to the IRS (US tax agency) because a former employer filed me on their business taxes as a contractor when I worked in the office as an employee. Some of my colleagues who also worked at startups in the past told me about pay discrepancies when times got tough for the business.
I've been in the same situation and here's what I learned: You will mostly never be able to revisit and refactor code 'once and for all' when it's deployed into production. The choices you make now will affect you in the future.
Instead your focus should be to take some time regularly and make some changes to keep your code from becoming a chaotic vengeful mess of a spaghetti bomb. The best analogy I have is something akin to gardening: it's through constant care and weeding out of bad vegetation that you have a great garden. You can't leave your code unattended and must always tend to it...
Not necesarrily true. I managed to do the most refactorings while under a non-technical leadership. You just take complete ownership for the code in that situation and do it along the way. You say no to features that would mess up the code or make the UI inconsistent, and you offer cleaner alternatives instead.
As a single tech person you also have a lot of power.
The most annoying part of your work will definitely be "interviewing" and Knowledge transfer sessions for the foreseeable future. Thinking about this even gives me a headache. The pros can be god mode for a long time. If you are good in your job then management will think twice to fire you. Then you'll probably be more entrepreneurial once you leave that place. Your value will be high. (Warning: These thoughts may not necessarily reflect reality.)
You need an interlocutor to talk to about your technical choices. You would also talk a lot about the product and strategy and reassure that the communications are effective and mutual knowledge updated.
While the OP has said they have 20% equity. Given the other two founders have a controlling interest, to what extent could they push the OP out and take/reduce their equity?
I’m not saying they would, but I’m wondering how possible it is. Could they vote to redistribute equity, or massively dilute OPs equity and then distribute more equity to themselves for example?
Very possible. It depends on the operating agreement, but unless any investment or creation of shares requires unanimous consent, they can be diluted to virtually nothing.
Interesting, it’s always been my assumption, and unless everyone is operating in good faith, if don’t have board control (and/or >50% of equity) it’s a possibility that I might well get diluted to nothing.
As such, unless I’m confident that I trust everyone involved, I would value equity quite low (and I’ve certainly been screwed out of equity in the past...)
Be prepared to not get any credit where credit is due and to be blamed for everything.
This is a position I was in for my own company and I will never put myself in a position like that again.
I spent countless nights and 20 hour days writing code, rewriting code, deleting everything, starting over, integrating every fucking thing on the planet, removing those integrations, etc.
The non technical founders won’t have any sense of what it takes to do the random bs things they come up with while “at a lunch,” and will expect you to whip it up quick, oh and it’ll have to take precedence over that thing they asked you to whip up quick just yesterday.
When you finally decide you’ve had enough and things aren’t going anywhere and you leave for a super high paying job, they’ll turn around with claims that you never did anything and you really fucked them.
I know this might come off as harsh, but being the only technical person is a huge mistake. Try to get at least one more in there and REALLY push to set expectations. Be very transparent in exactly what it’ll take to do something. If you need to create a feature, let them know “sure I can do it. It’s not easy though. There are database migrations to write, the feature will need to be tied into our existing codebase. It’s currently X, but needs to be Y for this to work with it. Problems A, B, and C will probably arise and I’ll have to 1, 2, 3, ...200.”
Even then they’ll just be daydreaming about their next “important meeting” where they’re really just getting drunk at another lunch with someone and discussed the product in a few hushed tones before “shooting the shit.”
You are the backbone and the heart of this company. Don’t be afraid to speak up, and understand if you leave, they’re fucked. Don’t let them make you believe otherwise.
You are the doing all the work department, whilst they are head office.
It might not be like that, but it will sure as hell feel like it. When they both take an early Friday to have a meeting in the bar/home/park, and you're stuck burning hours, and the weekend, trying to make those quick changes needed before next release. They both agreed they were necessary, but they don't accept that needs a full db redesign.
You have everything in writing, and your respective percentage and share vesting sorted already? No? Leave now.
If you have 50% and they 25% each, signed off, and you thrive on stress, keep on truckin'
Also, take the doomsayers in this thread with a grain of salt. Some developers have bad experiences in their career and start thinking that all non-technical folks are just soul-sucking vampires, while often in reality they themselves are the source of the problems.
I would say that your main function is to effectively communicate with the co-founders and be the bridge between technology and business goals. Make sure they're aware of pros and cons of every development related decision. Get used to saying no and pushing back on some of their ideas. Your main goal is building a successful business, writing clean code and using cool tech comes in secondary.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadMy fav resource (only discovered it recently here on HN) is this document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnw...
it has helped me a great deal to assess a new situation and figure out whether the non-tech founders and decision makers in the firm are actually on the ball doing their part.
Understanding their role (what is their strategy in finding product market fit) is crucial in evaluating "your bosses" performance and ultimately if whether the team and product can make it post MVP.
Just focusing on MVP is a fallacy IMVHO because it lets them isolate you (the engineer) into sticking to your niche within the org. The problems then start once you have the MVP and bosses then realizes they have missed all the steps (because they didn't know and unlike you are still learning the hard way how to do things) and you as a team are actually nowhere. It always ends in tears unless all of you are already at eye-level.
good luck!
Tears is best case scenario. OP should be reviewing his/her paperwork with an attorney at this point. I fully expect the employment documents to have errors or vagueness conveniently located in places that would benefit the business.
1) continuously (daily) interview potential customers BEFORE the MVP is ready (and document their findings) so that you as a team have clear understanding what customers actually need
2) ensure enough financing that the product and team can be build
3) help you in recruiting more developers
Understanding customers
I once did a startup in a similar setup (2 non-technical founders, me as a single technical founder) and the biggest mistake was 2 non-technical founders were waiting for MVP to be ready before they really started to approach customers. I tried to push them to do more customer interviews, but they looked it purely from sales perspective and thought we didn't yet have anything to sell. We effectively build the wrong thing that nobody wanted and they started to lose interest when they realized that the MVP doesn't sell on it's own without significant iteration.
Hiring
Also, although building MVP quickly is an important step so that you can start to collect better customer feedback in a search for product-market fit, remember that building a team is as critical. Even if you don't have money to hire engineers at this point, you need to start to build hiring pipeline early. It is very hard as a single developer to effectively take care of both bug fixing, devops and new feature development when you start to get customers.
Give up equity to raise money to hire and scale.
Otherwise, raise money preselling the product to scale the company, but this likely chains you to customers that you may find later would be better with their own consultants.
And if this means you're not getting paid, 20% (or 50%) of 0 and $12k opportunity cost is $144k/year investment
This rings alarm bells to me.
Long story short, I worked 6 months, they sat around being neurosurgeons all day. They found a buddy to invest seed round at a poor valuation, basically sold the company.
My mistakes were: working on it too long without an agreement, not asking for enough when we did get an agreement, poor negotiation when seed was being done, and not knowing their motives for doing a company. They wanted a check box for their resume, not to run a business (despite what they told.me and themselves)
Bail. They haven't raised enough money or presold enough product.
This deal sounds like more they found someone to work to them for free. Being remote shouldn't matter.
What exactly does that mean? Do you expect your stake to go up or down in the future? Do you have it in writing that has been reviewed by your own lawyer? Because the reality may be 0%-50%-50% and you just don’t realise yet.
I have trouble following the logic there. If your remote status means you're significantly less valuable / productive than someone local (to the other founders), they should replace you with a local hire.
But if you're a right person for the job, then I can't think of any principled reason for you to accept less than 1/3, protected ownership of the company.
That being said, because this is a business relationship, IMO you're best served by viewing this dispassionately as a negotiation. It's hard to justify a particular level of ownership for you as being "fair", similarly to how it's hard to justify a particular price for a commodity as being "fair". So you might consider the following goal instead: try to maximize your equity + salary, within the constraints of (a) dealing honestly, and (b) keeping it a win-win-win proposition for you and the other two owners.
And, as others have said, prior to renegotiating, give some serious thought to the ways your 20% can become 0%. Even if your still in the honeymoon period with the other founders, there's a decent chance they, or other investors, will try to strip that away from you in the future. It sucks, but it's one of the painful lessons of startup life. Monetary stress or greed can turn many persons into unbelievable jerks.
Less obviously you'll be making the technical decisions, and then having to work out where responsibility for these and "product" decisions lie.
It's not clear where the cash is coming from; are you all paying in? Did that decide the split? Who's getting paid and who's putting in "sweat equity"? You're also a founder, right?
Given your position you should entrench your status ASAP as "CTO" or similar title before you start hiring. You should decide how you feel about people getting hired "above" you (good or bad) and plan accordingly.
There will be at least one stand-up shouting argument early on. This is normal, but needs to be handled maturely - done successfully it will improve the business. Being the "remote" partner puts you at a disadvantage here.
Just remember: the real bonuses will go to the managers, not you, they will get rid of you as soon as they will need to find someone to blame for their decisions.
And of course the non-technical managers will know that "everything is easy, you will do the new dropbox over the weekend, right" (however that's so easy that they cannot do it themselves).
Yes. I'm going to venture to say that if you sense this at all or you can already feel like you know that your co-workers / superiors aren't very tech savvy and you suspect they hired you to be a one-stop-shop to fix everything computer and technology related for them (that they don't know about themselves) than you need to, in painful detail, outline their expectations of you, your capabilities, what you can and can't do, what you think should be done, and also give ideas and plans for how to tackle the toughest things they expect as well as how you'll go about outsourcing things you don't know how to do / don't want to do / can't do from 3rd parties who absolutely can deliver those things.
Get ahead of the nightmare before it eats you alive.
EDIT: Since so many other people are echoing my sentiments I'll also add that if you feel like your superiors think along the lines of, "Good developers are a dime a dozen and you can be easily replaced.", than you need to start job hunting. I've met a few people who did IT or sales in server space / colocation, etc. and helped them on a few side projects / start-up ideas and I'll never forget how much money they wound up losing after trying to low ball me for work I did when they dropped that line on me, flat out, in the middle of me working on their websites, network, general IT stuff, and other apps / generic projects. They tried to renegotiate my payment amount and payment schedule in the middle of the contract after already signing it. Big mistake.
It felt so good to hold all the cards and power when they tried to flex that "I'm your boss and I can make or break your career / life right now." attitude. They thought they could easily replace a developer / technical person like changing shoes but they didn't realize that a lot of developers won't put up with this shit from the get go. Lots of people won't even give it a chance, they aren't willing to work with superiors who are learning how to treat technical folks. Be careful out there and don't allow your superiors to dictate your mood or happiness. It's not worth your time, effort, or the money because if you find yourself in that situation you can almost bet your aren't getting paid enough. You'll probably be doing the work of 2-3 or more professionals for people bringing in the money you should be making while doing next to no actual work that helps the company profit.
Another thing. If you do wind up leaving a company and you know they aren't paying you enough you can nearly bet that after you go and they try to fill your spot they'll attempt to fill it by paying someone LESS than they paid you. I've heard nightmare stories from recruiters / headhunters I've worked with who were tasked with trying to fill my shoes with companies who seriously thought I was wrong when I told them they were asking too much of me / paying me too little for the "bare minimum" they thought I was doing (multiple people's jobs as I said). People are crazy out there.
Having been in OP's exact position, he/she will probably be, at the very least, threatened with termination in a highly unprofessional manner if this is asked. I'm talking under-the-breath threats to passive-aggressive actions designed to make OP's life a living hell. Non-tech founders are the worst and will do everything to make you feel in debt to them since they provided you with a job (aka an "amazing opportunity to disrupt XYZ field").
Without some understanding in that realm it's going to be choppy seas.
Example from my career - I joined a startup as a senior-level architect. There were only a few tech folks at the time and my background was databases, so I ended up doing a lot of the database work. It was something I was good at, but I considered it part of a past from which I was moving on.
Eventually I was typecast as an operational DBA - a tactical role rather than the strategic one I envisioned. When management decided to adjust my salary accordingly, I had to leave.
Lesson: Communicate to management all the technical roles that are required in your startup. Let them know which ones align with your own career path. Remind them that they eventually need to get others to fill the other roles. You will have to repeat this often, just not often enough to be a pain about it.
> for my startup
It's not YOUR startup. Your startup would mean 100% of ownership.
(from another answer)
> 20% for me for now because I work remotely.
Do you have any documentation for this 20% stake ownership? If not, you can be replaced in an instant.
Are these two founders in the same country? Yes, well expect to have decisions made without your input.
There is also the challenge of the other founders appreciating your input into the company. You are doing everything. They won't appreciate this and they won't see the amount of work either.
Non-technical founders know squat and they don't care either about how much time it takes to do things.
------
I've gone through this myself. I was a "founder" in 1 startup with a non-technical founder and before that I was a "small" equity holder in another company, which was founded by 3 non-technicals.
In both circumstances I was just an employee doing my job. No upside at all. I didn't come away with anything but experience in the respective industry.
------
If you are going to stay, then I suggest to learn how to implement the tech for this startup and in turn, can provide you with a springboard for your own startup and if this is the case. Ensure you are getting paid!
Jumping from this, even if OP is getting paid he/she should make sure they're not doing anything sketchy with their pay/tax documents. I've had to go to the IRS (US tax agency) because a former employer filed me on their business taxes as a contractor when I worked in the office as an employee. Some of my colleagues who also worked at startups in the past told me about pay discrepancies when times got tough for the business.
Instead your focus should be to take some time regularly and make some changes to keep your code from becoming a chaotic vengeful mess of a spaghetti bomb. The best analogy I have is something akin to gardening: it's through constant care and weeding out of bad vegetation that you have a great garden. You can't leave your code unattended and must always tend to it...
As a single tech person you also have a lot of power.
I’m not saying they would, but I’m wondering how possible it is. Could they vote to redistribute equity, or massively dilute OPs equity and then distribute more equity to themselves for example?
As such, unless I’m confident that I trust everyone involved, I would value equity quite low (and I’ve certainly been screwed out of equity in the past...)
My thought:
Get out.
Everyone else commenting has brought up valid points. This is a high-risk high-stress low-reward situation for you.
Get out while you can. The first version of the app you built can serve as a great showcase in your portfolio.
This is a position I was in for my own company and I will never put myself in a position like that again.
I spent countless nights and 20 hour days writing code, rewriting code, deleting everything, starting over, integrating every fucking thing on the planet, removing those integrations, etc.
The non technical founders won’t have any sense of what it takes to do the random bs things they come up with while “at a lunch,” and will expect you to whip it up quick, oh and it’ll have to take precedence over that thing they asked you to whip up quick just yesterday.
When you finally decide you’ve had enough and things aren’t going anywhere and you leave for a super high paying job, they’ll turn around with claims that you never did anything and you really fucked them.
I know this might come off as harsh, but being the only technical person is a huge mistake. Try to get at least one more in there and REALLY push to set expectations. Be very transparent in exactly what it’ll take to do something. If you need to create a feature, let them know “sure I can do it. It’s not easy though. There are database migrations to write, the feature will need to be tied into our existing codebase. It’s currently X, but needs to be Y for this to work with it. Problems A, B, and C will probably arise and I’ll have to 1, 2, 3, ...200.”
Even then they’ll just be daydreaming about their next “important meeting” where they’re really just getting drunk at another lunch with someone and discussed the product in a few hushed tones before “shooting the shit.”
You are the backbone and the heart of this company. Don’t be afraid to speak up, and understand if you leave, they’re fucked. Don’t let them make you believe otherwise.
It might not be like that, but it will sure as hell feel like it. When they both take an early Friday to have a meeting in the bar/home/park, and you're stuck burning hours, and the weekend, trying to make those quick changes needed before next release. They both agreed they were necessary, but they don't accept that needs a full db redesign.
You have everything in writing, and your respective percentage and share vesting sorted already? No? Leave now.
If you have 50% and they 25% each, signed off, and you thrive on stress, keep on truckin'
Also, take the doomsayers in this thread with a grain of salt. Some developers have bad experiences in their career and start thinking that all non-technical folks are just soul-sucking vampires, while often in reality they themselves are the source of the problems.
I would say that your main function is to effectively communicate with the co-founders and be the bridge between technology and business goals. Make sure they're aware of pros and cons of every development related decision. Get used to saying no and pushing back on some of their ideas. Your main goal is building a successful business, writing clean code and using cool tech comes in secondary.
Source: I got diagnosed with major depression after leaving a job almost exactly like OP's. Doing better now, though.