[JohnnyD10]

Thank you everyone for your views. They confirm what I think I've known for a while, I just needed some experienced perspective to validate these thoughts. I think what's made me re-think many times is that I'm surrounded by 5 other people in this company, all of whom are about 10 years older than me except one, and they seem more than eager to step up and offer this guy their near full time allegiance unquestioningly. It makes me pause and say "am I not seeing something here? Am I just naturally more distrusting than these other guys I started with?" So I've slowed down and quadruple re-thought every time I was ready to walk, trying to see it from a different angle. Still, the nagging discomfort remains. Glad to know I'm not too off base.

Update: yesterday, CEO tells me he will offer the guy who started 2 weeks ago the same equity I have, because he's done "such a good job". He has been kicking it hard, it's true, and he does really well, but he's fresh, and the CEO's perspective is so skewed based on what's bright and shiny in front of him at the moment that he totally disregards the contribution of people working for him 7 months for free who got him to where he's at now.

The sad part is I think he knows this damn well, and his strategy well may be to operate a company on a string of trusting people who he will continue to cycle in as the disenchanted ones before them leave.

[justinlaing]

What's the track record of the CEO? Have they had multiple previous successes? Have people followed them from their last success to this new company? How much do you believe in the idea? Do you love working with the others at this company? Are they top tier talent? If the answer to all of these is yes, maybe it's worth staying.

[JohnnyD10]

I think the reason people are so willing to stick around is 1) I don't think they really know what the norm is for compensation in a startup, 2) the others seem to have been friends with him previously (usually a bad idea to go into a startup with friends, but I digress), and 3) to your question, he was once the CEO of a company that made the same product, so he has connections in the industry, relationships with distributors, and quite honestly, he's a sales animal. He has already pre-sold a shipping container of the product (far, FAR before us engineers will have it ready - a pending potential trainwreck of its own).

In that previous CEO role, as I understand it, he left on bad terms over some kind of compensation disagreement (ironic?).

A red flag in the beginning was that one of our engineers still runs an authorized service center for that former company's returns. Yet, when the CEO started our company, one of the first things he went about trying to do was to smear the last company in the press (which would have been technically hurting part of the business of the engineer I mentioned, who still made income servicing that company's products). The guy just doesn't think about other people, yet he's good at bringing in the dollars.

I think people are seeing the sales and letting that put off their concerns (if they have them) about whether they will be compensated and when. I have to be honest - I have seen him get us out of some sticky situations by pivoting at the last minute. He used his industry experience to do that, which also contributed to the ability to even do that. It gives him a perception of knowing way more than anyone else, and so they are inclined to trust him when he says this compensation strategy will be acceptable. With this experience, he has an aura of wisdom that makes people feel almost foolish for broaching the subject of pay (I know, I've tried it).

What's doubly ironic is that he insists on air-tight contracts with suppliers and customers, and mentions it being okay to "bend them over" once in a while, since we're paying them and they're locked in. Yet, for an employee, I had to fight tooth and nail just to get the lame contract I have with him for pay.