[ramtatatam]

A few years ago I was helping to build a startup, when I joined it was only founder and myself. In the peak I had 12 people to work on product. Unfortunately this particular startup was a failure, we only had potential customers and all of them - of course - huge but never cached in. There was no real direction, founder was picking up whatever catchy phrase was thrown in the meetings he attended. I never figured out how was the company surviving from month to month. I left and never looked back, they are still afloat. Funny thing we are still friends with founder.

At the point I was leaving I was in similar position as you are, with one distinction - I am not a dropout, so I suppose my choices were easier.

Straight after I left I thought that maybe I should look for a leadership role since I was leading the team, implemented scrum and generally kept everything together from technical perspective. But then I realized the environment I could strive was not what I would potentially join - I hired all 12 of team members, I was in privileged position. When joining established team it's not easy to assume tech lead role, at least I feel it's not easy from inter-personal point of view.

So I went for dev role in pre-round-A stage. And I don't regret, this startup is very well managed, they have very good idea of doing business and I learned a lot about the topic. I'm only dev here but most of the times when I had opportunity to listen to what CEO said about business plans, or sales lead about structured way how he approaches the market - I found it enlightening (even though I have gone through lean startup, mum's test and similar books packed with advice).

It's always good thing to step back and reflect on what you really want.