[matrix_overload]

The article misses the obvious. You don't become a technical co-founder to make bank with the equity or salary. You'll get diluted, replaced and kicked out the moment traction starts gaining.

You become a technical co-founder to trade in your technical skills, learn about a new domain, figure out where the pain points are, and eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.

Also, the article is an obvious pitch in the likes of "don't get a co-founder, order an MVP from me instead".

[946789987649]

> You'll get diluted, replaced and kicked out the moment traction starts gaining.

This is just straight up wrong. You don't HAVE to enter the VC cycle of endless raising, and if they're wanting to replace/kick you out, what are you doing wrong?

> eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.

That's literally what being a co-founder is. You might be even split with someone, but you are still very much the captain.

[neilv]

> You become a technical co-founder to trade in your technical skills, learn about a new domain, figure out where the pain points are, and eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.

Is this what people commonly think about technical co-founder?

Or are you recommending a less-common way to think about it?

[dmitrygr]

> You don't become a technical co-founder to make bank with the equity or salary. [...] and eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.

So by your logic, only the CEO gets to make bank from a startup and everyone else, CTO included, are to get screwed and accept this?

[matrix_overload]

By my logic, to make bank from a startup, you need to be a master negotiator constantly watching your back, parsing poker faces in meetings, reading fine print in agreements, and trying to bust other people's schemes, while scheming on your own. You won't have any time left for the technical side.

A CTO, in theory, is supposed to be shielded from all the political screwery, and focus on delivering the product. In practice, it makes the CTO's equity one of the easiest targets for those willing to play games.

So, unless the CEO/CTO relationship is decades long and is worth to both sides more than a short-term gain, CTO gets screwed.

[k__]

Do you have to get diluted?

Like, can you get forced to sell?

[hedora]

Each funding round and new hire brings dilution.

The company issues new shares for the investors and new hires.

So, you might start with 100,000 shares and 10% of the company, but by IPO, there could be 100,000,000 shares, giving you 0.1% of the company.

(These numbers are completely made up, though if the company ipo’s for $1B, that’s $10/share which is a plausible price per share. Companies often grant additional shares to early employees.)

[matrix_overload]

Exactly. And then the board votes on who gets extra shares to compensate for the dilution, and the CTO is suddenly not on the list. Because the CEO spent months playing political chess with the board members, negotiating who gets what, and before that spent years playing political chess with investors to see who gets into the board. CTO is usually not involved in these games, and has no pull beyond the CEO's goodwill.