[busterarm]

I'm not so sure. I've had a ton of CTO offers come my way and usually it's a situation where they're really hiring their first developer and want to pay more in equity than in cash. Most of the ones I bothered to talk to weren't really offering any kind of meaningful decision making power about the business.

This wasn't always the case, but it was overwhelmingly the majority. I'm not that impressed by CTOs of tiny businesses unless they're also co-founders and domain experts on top of that.

Someone in my cohort did a couple months of contracting, one job and then cofounded a startup all within like 8 months. He's the sole dev and his cofounder is a rich friend. Their business is in the California marijuana industry. I am not too envious.