I will get my Master's degree in Computer Science in March, and I was already looking for a stable job with a decent salary. But today I got a shocking offer from my boss.
I am currently working as a Software Engineer intern at a startup. This internship is like a final thesis for my Master's degree. And apparently, they saw my "enthusiasm" and want me to become the CTO of the startup, the problem is that I do not have that much experience, I have less than 2 years of professional experience (I am only 24 years old) and I only started coding 3 years ago! I really was looking for a stable job, just to get more experience, save some money and eventually become an entrepreneur and create my own company.
But this looks like a way too big jump for me. What if I fail? What if the startup fails because of me? Because basically every single engineer that I would hire would be smarter than me and would have more experience than me. However, none of them would be as motivated or enthusiast as me, I know that.
The other main problem would be my salary, which would basically be 0 $us until we get funded, which, according to my boss, could be in May 2016 or even before that.
This will be a life-changing decision for me, so please, I need your advice.
With all due respect, if this is a tech startup. How good can its odds of success be if they're actually considering converting an intern into the CTO?
I mean, for me personally if I were interviewing there for a staff engineering position and I found out that they'd taken somebody with very little professional experience as an engineer, along with zero executive/leadership experience (director, VP, GM, etc.), and then made them CTO... I'd wonder what was wrong with the rest of the company leadership.
For reasons not the least of which are... when you go seek funding any half-way legitimate investor is almost certainly going to look at the leadership team, its prior experience, its successes, its failures, etc. Unless the thing you guys are doing is the world's most amazing product that's hyper defensible and hyper differentiated, then a huge component of what the investors are evaluating isn't the business or the product... it's the team.
But all that said, you'd learn a whole crapload from the experience, so perhaps it's best just to have at it.
About the only other thing I can say is... if you're having to ask this question in a public forum on the internet to a bunch of strangers, then that's probably a pretty useful indicator of your actual preparedness in and of itself.
While you may be young, you're smart. You already noticed that there's an issue with your lack of experience. The question is: How do you solve that issue?
Your success as CTO is mostly determined by yourself. Understand what's required of you. Start interviewing other CTOs at other startups and understand what their roles are and what they need to do. Build relationships with them so that you have a network of advisors if you ever need someone to have a chat with. Learn a lot. Do a lot of research. Do a lot of thinking.
Leadership is not all about experience. Leadership is also about listening. And all leaders start from somewhere. Once you have an open mind to learn, you'll realize that being a leader is about being courageous and responsible for the happiness of other people. It's also about helping to steer the ship in the right direction. But with all startups, you're making decisions on minimal information. What you need is a mind of learning. Test and learn and never assume you know it all. Then you'll be fine.
The salary issue is another big issue. Would it be worth to trade away your salary for the experience that you get? How will you survive? Do you have enough savings? Do you have a backup plan? If you're not getting any salary, then you should get significant amount of equity. And at this stage, as the CTO, will you also have to build the product? Job titles at early stage don't matter much.
Lastly, do you trust your boss enough that he will steer the ship correctly? Do you think he has what it takes to make it all work? And how is your relationship with him? Will he listen to your opinions or is he going to make all the decisions by himself?
My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies and he is basically wanting to "test" me. At least that is what he says, but I definitely think he has what it takes to steer the ship correctly. We are currently being incubated, and all our mentors are very successful entrepreneurs and just by asking them the same question I posted here, I already learnt a lot.
How would I survive? A loan maybe? I can survive with less than 1000 $us a month. So far I've been surviving with a part-time job, but as a CTO I would need to work full time, so that would not be an option anymore.
Savings? None.
Backup plan? Well, getting a normal software engineering job, and an average life I guess.
Yes, I would probably have to help building the product as well. I am up to the challenge, it is just a little bit scary.
> My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies
Forgive me for possibly appearing to attack your boss here as it's not my intention, but do you know what happened to those companies? Without that information for all you know they went bankrupt as he kept making interns the CxO
As for surviving without income all I can say is don't take debt lightly. While in my case I can only blame myself I was in debt for the majority of the past 10 years due to supplementing low income. Eventually the loans/overdrafts/cards stop coming and you're dead in the water without a paddle.
If this company does not succeed before that point (where success is defined as the company not only being funded but much more importantly - you actually get paid) you will have gotten into debt for no reason. It's a very risky move, one which I would never advise someone do for another person's company unless they had a really good reason to disagree with me
It'll be good to get an understanding of "if you're not being compensated by salary then what are you compensated with?"
It sounds like you're literally taking the same amount of risk as your boss and for that reason, you should have some share in whatever rewards that come out of the risk taking.
Money to survive has to come from somewhere (i.e. loan, parents, savings, etc.) but it definitely doesn't appear out of nowhere.
Also, evaluate the product. How long do you think they can reach the point where it's revenue generating? In the absence of revenue and cash runs out, will they start to fund raise again? Will all the other expenses be comfortably covered by the current cash pool?
It also comes down to a lot of luck as well. There's really no right or wrong answer here and no one can say for sure if it'll be a success or not. But that's the fun part of life. And trust me, even if you have a normal software engineering job, the success is also always down to you. And the benefits are that you manage to build relationships with other talented software developers and you'd be bringing in money that you can save to start your own venture in the future. Many people have also been very successful starting companies later down in life.
Nothing is ever a dead end. Every path has a pros and cons. It's ultimately up to us to open our minds to see it and leverage it.
>> My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies
He is experienced in what? In ripping of the interns? He as a "very experienced guy" is not able to get a loan of 6k and to pay you 1k monthly in cash until the company gets founded or dies? He wants to test you? Yeah, he wants to see whether you are ready to work for free!
There are lots of successful entrepreneurs in the world. Very few of them have success building startups in the sense that Silicon Valley uses the word. Much of what passes for a startup these days is a new small business and successful small business entrepreneurs often bring successful small business practices such as not paying employees for hours worked to their mentoring advice.
Would you take out a loan to work at a hotel or dry cleaners or construction company? That this is even on the table shows how disinterested people in a form of mutual success that includes you.
My experience is that before people screw me, they display tells. An unwillingness to pay is the most obvious. Take the CTO position without salary and it will be easy for people to rationalize not paying you based on your already having accepted not being paid. If your internship was also unpaid, that's probably the reason that the unpaid CTO position is being floated.
It's not any better if your internship was paid. An upaid CTO position then signals a willingness to take a pay cut and call it a promotion.
Your goals and the goals of your boss are not aligned. You need an income, you need to gain experience from people that already have that experience and you need stability. To become CTO of an unfunded start-up means that you will be the most experienced person, you will not be making any money and in the slightly longer run the company will probably fail.
'Until we get funded' translates into 'unfunded', and 'could be in May 2016 or even before that' translates into 'possibly never'.
If you don't have money in the bank and if you can't sit this out for a year or more and walk away without any scratches then I would strongly advise against taking this position, but be sure to thank them for the compliment. Join a start-up that is already funded instead, maybe not as the CTO but at least in a position where you can pick up the skills that you need.
Also, if you do take the position consider the very real possibility that you'll be ditched as soon as they can afford someone more experienced than an intern.
> I really was looking for a stable job
> just to get more experience
> save some money and
> eventually become an entrepreneur and create my own company.
the first three objectives are short term. sounds like this offer gives you 1 / 3 -- the experience, nothing else. let's assume other organisations would be interested in your abilities and enthusiasm - if you can get an offer from an established company, you'll still be able to gain experience, and that'd give you 3/3.
Either way you can still pursue your own business(es) in future.
If you're going to work for this startup for no salary, you need to ensure that the rest of the deal is fair.
It sounds like you are being given the opportunity to build someone else's Minimun Viable Product for free! And you would not even be getting founder part of ownership. And who knows if the CTO position is still yours after funding.
My biggest concern would be your boss(s). Do they joke about doing shady things before or in the future? Do they do drugs? Are they pathologically unable to talk about anything other than how much money this app/idea/business will make? Do they occasionally do dumb things like fund the start of the company by giving away 55% of the company in exchange for $300,000 from their soon the be ex-wife and her friends?
"It sounds like you are being given the opportunity to build someone else's Minimun Viable Product for free!"
I second this. I have no way of evaluating the character of your boss, but there are warning signs all over the place.
My story: I was hired to build a MVP (did -eventually- get paid) and due to various missteps, it turned into a one man job (I was the entire IT staff for 4 years). Part of those missteps were me being work-obsessed (a bad trap to fall into, it leads to burnout) and the other misstep was that these founders, who had no experience in IT, were all psychopaths (as in one had a criminal history of fraud, the other should have been jailed long ago). I failed to do one of the basic tasks of business, which is know who you are dealing with.
They used my "enthusiasm" which in the IT/startup world is quite necessary, and leveraged it against me. I certainly knew enough at that point in my career, but it got lost in the need to keep things working. Eventually I wised up, when a customer made legal threats because they had been blatantly lied to about the product they were buying.
I, as <u>nominal CTO</u>, had not been paying attention to the sales process and stupidly was relying on the others to take care of that area. It was then I realized the full nature of the whole operation and how I'd been taken advantage of - so I quit. I reasoned they were going to fuck me over one way or another down the line, so I'd better get out.
Less than a year later, the CEO abandoned his wife and kids <as in literally disappearing one day> (she owned 51% of the company) and now they are still fighting it out in divorce court. The CEO turned out to have a 25 year history of fraud and cheating even the companies he worked for.
So ... the people you are dealing with --may be-- great, but you have no real world experience in how businesses are run or how life actually is at the C layer. Read up on the Sociopaths/Clueless/Losers theory - it is a valuable thing to know, as it explains a lot. I've seen shades of it over my 30 year career in IT, but it never hit home till I did this startup.
And if you are really CTO, and a salary of $0 is being offered, why have you not mentioned the percentage of equity offered? If you really are going to be responsible for hiring and designing the tech side of the company and ... you should be getting a large chunk of the company. It is irrelevant the company already exists - by being an official CTO, you are taking on a lot of responsibility.
No offense intended, I'm sure you're capable of programming and all that, but ... I wouldn't hire a 24 year old with just a few years experience as CTO. The Master's is irrelevant in this situation - there is a lot of non-IT social type knowledge needed, IMO. The politics of business is nasty stuff, and your stereotypical engineer (i.e. me) likes to stay out of that stuff; it is a skill set you have to either like (and so you're an asshole) or you just get used to it. I've always tried to stay out of it, hence the 15 year career of contracting.
I think my advice is, if you want to stay with this company, then say you want to be "Lead Architect" and leave the management/business stuff to someone else - then you can expect to get a salary and will only be tangentially exposed to the business/political crap that typically goes on - that way, you get some valuable non-IT experience safely and some tech experience too. When (not if, this all doesn't sound like a winner) the company crash and burns, you'll have some useful profit out of it.
This is a pet peeve of mine. You're likely taking a greater risk than your "boss" here is. You should be asking and getting at least 30% if you're going into an unfunded, unproven, un-DEVELOPED company. I start negotiations at 50% in these situations and make a potential partner defend a reduction from that point.
But the top two comments in this thread nailed it. This is not going to end well for you in all likelihood. I'd pass on it.
> But this looks like a way too big jump for me. What if I fail? What if the startup fails because of me?
Yes accept! Use that fear of failure to tap into your drive, creativity, and bring your A game. Business/Tech Management/Leadership are ALL learned and practiced things.
Money should NOT be an issue-- go to back to your boss. Share with him your bare bones monthly budget. Tell him you need $X just to eat beans & rice and pay basic bills. Can he help cover you during the gap before funding? Could someone else, say a family member cover you for 6 months? Strike a bargain with him, keep your part-time job for necessary cash-flow, then work part-time on the startup. If you believe in this guy, the two of you can find a way.
Incidentally, you might find Josh Kaufmann's Personal MBA a helpful read > https://personalmba.com/
Agreed. If they really want the company to succeed and they need you to steer the ship, they should at the very least make sure you don't have to worry about these things.
This is absolutely terrible advice. The OP could be making six figures at a real job, not "beans and rice" money at a position that will be taken from him as soon as the company is funded.
Focusing on "real job" compensation is myopic thinking.
The promise of any startup is the potential reward on the Back-End (not to mention incomparable experience). Any bootstapper understands the beans & rice context, especially in the pre-revenue/pre-funding stage. It's never a permanent condition.
You can use the stock and salary you get working for a megacorp to invest in a startup if you want. That seems like a smarter way to gamble on startup success than with your time.
No significant reward comes without risk. As for optimizing time, overpaid Megacorp salarymen frequently find their skills out-of-date- with career options and earning potential derailed in their early 40s. Timing is everything.
It seems a glorified internship to me. Experience may be interesting, even good, but no money upfront? Meh. You will get ton of paid opportunities if you are as smart as your posts here. Good luck.
If you are confident with your programming skills and believe this startup has bright future, accept it. Otherwise, join another company to gain income and experience.
I apologize if the following comes off as harsh, but it comes from experience, not malice.
Where can I find people like you who will work for free on the promise of future money dependent on a roll of the die which is funding? Please tell me. I'll take one CTO, 2 senior devs, and 4 junior devs.
Here's the deal. I don't know your situation, but you are basically saying that your time is worth $0. That might be true or it might not be. You have to be the one to decide that.
Additionally, if the company gets funded, the very first thing that will happen is you will be fired or otherwise relieved of your position and they will hire an experienced CTO who will be paid a lot of money. This is the smart money move for them and a pat on the back for a job well done is all you will be likely to get. By that time, you will have no solid programming experience, having played spreadsheet warrior for a year or two, and being at least one level abstracted away from the real work through which you would earn your bread once you leave this losing lottery ticket.
Finally, you have no experience. You might not even conceive of what this role requires. You are being asked to be a CTO during an internship. This is a glorious chance to fail. How strong are you emotionally, to face a humiliating failure? Your decisions will be picked apart and your current lack of experience will be laid bare for everyone to witness.
I concur with that advice, it seems that the startup founders are looking for a naive young guy to work for free before getting some funding. If you (OP) are really interested in that position and trust the founders (I wouldn't, but I haven't met them in person, so who knows?), then you should become a co-founder and ask for significant amount of equity in the company (10% at least).
another pitfall is that they are probably wagering that submitter has little understanding of stock dilution and they can inflate the upside while getting him to get things started for free and potentially replace him after funding begins
Having seen the OP's personal site, I may have been a bit harsh. He could well have the tools to succeed and if he accepts this position for no pay then his employers are getting an absolute bargain. Shame on them if screw him over as he seems like the kind of person you really would want on your team.
"Additionally, if the company gets funded, the very first thing that will happen is you will be fired or otherwise relieved of your position and they will hire an experienced CTO who will be paid a lot of money. This is the smart money move for them and a pat on the back for a job well done is all you will be likely to get."
If that was the situation (and I agree, potentially likely) - but yet still an option for him, I would have him attempt to write in to the contract that on funding, he would be back paid $x, up to a full amount or some portion thereof that he would have earned...
The contract can be ignored. How's he going to fight it? He's been working for free and he's broke. He has more important things to worry about like eating. So a crappy lawyer takes his case on a 30% contingency. It's still an uphill road until he might somehow get something.
My last interns had a salary of 13€/hr gross (I´m based in Munich). Working 20 hrs a week is enough to pay the rent and buy beer. In the remaining 20 hrs you could still be the unpaid CTO/CFO/CEO of any startup.
Correction: 80 hrs/wk available for the unpaid CTO. You are thinking like an employee would by speaking of a 40 hour work week.
To the OP: choose the startup if it is your life, your mission, and you can directly build value. If you do not believe in the value-proposition, then find something else. There are plenty of startups, plenty of growing companies all over the planet. Find one solving a problem you personally care about that also has a requisite amount of upside for your personal risk preference.
I wasn't in the exact same boat as you, but I did take a CTO role without much experience under my belt. I'm actually only a year older than you.
And yeah, we failed, like most startups do, and I had to quickly scuttle to find another source of income. That sucked. Truth be told, I'm still paying off a lot of debts I made from trying to survive sans-salary.
But I have no regrets whatsoever about what I did. It didn't make me a better programmer, but it did make me better at helping employees out, it made me better at understanding productivity, and it gave me an overall better perspective on how to build great products.
And don't worry about engineers being smarter than you. Doesn't matter, that's the ideal anyway. The important thing is to be the one who listens and makes things better for the engineers so they have what they need to build a great product.
The salary part sucks, yeah. I basically had to moonlight when I was working as a CTO. This is where I would really advise you put some serious thought as to whether or not you would really be committed to this startup, because in all likelihood you'll wind up with a full-time-plus job as an underpaid executive, and you'll have to moonlight on the side in order to make up for the remainder of the unpaid bills. You won't have a whole lot of time for side-projects, if any at all. Not for a while anyway.
But seriously, don't worry about failure. As long as you listen you should be okay. Even if you're not, you'll still learn something, and it'll be really valuable for the next phase of your life. Case in point: I'm building my own startup now, and I have more confidence going into it because of the lessons I learned.
Oh, and one more final takeaway. You'll have to do some fighting. Your job as CTO of is to lead the technical element of the company, but fellow executives, or your boss, may occasionally step on your toes. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. When they're wrong, stand up for yourself, be diplomatic about it, but don't be a pushover about it, and back up your case with some evidence. You'll win some and lose some, just try not to lose too many crucial battles.
Most useful reply so far. Thank you. I really needed a story of someone who lived kind of the same experience.
I know there are risks, and contrary to what people here seem to think, I am not easy to rip off. We haven't even started to negotiate with my boss, of course I will try to avoid loans and all that, I am not stupid. I haven't taken a decision yet, I need to think about it and talk to my boss and team for a couple of weeks.
I understand your position. But the negotiation part is crucial to your decision. If you "just" a CTO for the startup, then I would follow the more common advice around here to reject it. Even though the experience might be valid, without the funding you wouldn't even get that, like hiring and managing other engineers - and trust me, if the founder said May, it will probably come in August at most. And if the startup is successfull you won't get the financial reward you deserve. So good experience is your upside.
BUT... if you become a Founder, a proper one, reflected in serious equity, not a BS job title, then it is very different. According to YC, less than 10% (before any funding) they don't even consider you a founder. So I would negotiate participation between a minimum of 10% and a maximum of being equal any other founder.
My opinion would be: founder or nothing. But I don't think it is irrational if the decision is: accepting the CTO role, gambling with the funding and considering experience a worthy outcome in the worst case.
1. I am not a lawyer but my understanding is: In the US, it would be illegal to pay less than the minimum wage. Many but not all jurisdictions have similar laws.
2. The idea of hiring people smarter is sound and will server you and employers well. Employers are people who actually pay.
3. If funding is as far away as May, the company is underfunded and has difficulty raising capital since it needs capital to pay your salary now. Or maybe the boss plans on replacing an inexperienced CTO with an experienced one once funding is in place...my friend Greg once got hired with no professional experience as the chef for a restaurant a month before it opened. I went to the grand opening party on a Thursday night. Friday there was a new experienced chef and Greg was out of a job. Clearly, none of that was spur of the moment.
4. If the title on your resume seems more valuable than knowledge skills abilities and money, then strongly consider the offer.
As others have said, the key points are that you should ask for at least a barebones salary and you will likely be replaced if this company takes off. However, this could be a great opportunity and you shouldn't let fear or self-doubt drive your decision.
One thing I'd like to add, assuming the financials work out and everyone is happy, is that moving from CS/programming to a CTO position is going to require quite a different skillset. You probably won't be programming all the time, at least not after whatever project they have in mind is in a stable place. You will potentially be responsible for reporting/BI/analytics, systems architecture and administration, tech support (Yes, everyone is going to ask you for help with their computers), and anything else tech-related that comes up along the way. If you want to stay in good shape as a programmer, you'll be responsible to find the focused time to code, keeping your skills sharp and current, and staying motivated to do so. At this time, you'd normally go work with an established development team who can guide and mentor you, as well as balance the team so that you have time and resources with which to further your skills.
The only thing in your post that makes me think this may be a good opportunity to explore is when you mention entrepreneurship as your long-term goal. This is likely going to be a great crash-course in how difficult that can be. My advice, though, would be to get great at what you know and learned, spend a couple years on a great dev team, save some money, and I bet there will still be opportunities for you to get into a startup for all or mostly equity.
Hope this helps. I'm just a young guy who's seen some different sides of the equation.
Great answer, thanks! I consider learning that new skillset as a pro, not a con, and I really enjoy team management.
Regarding your advice, that is exactly what my long-term plan was: getting a stable job for a few years, then become an entrepreneur. But that is everybody's plan, right? Everybody wants to eventually become his own boss, but the reality is that once people get a comfortable life, it is very unlikely that they will leave that comfort zone. I don't know if that would be my case, but I think it is definitely something to consider.
I think if you have the drive to become an entrepreneur, you will. My experience, really quickly, is: Intern programmer, two years college, two years working, one year entrepreneur, at my current job for three years. I spent one year doing freelance consulting and development, and it was a blast. I had fun, but didn't make quite enough money to live on, and found a job I was happy with. I freelance on the side now. But I'd do it full-time again in a heartbeat if I could save up some money and line up some steady monthly work. I don't think starting your own business is everyone's plan. From how you're presenting things, I personally think it's very likely that you will leave the "comfort zone" you mentioned. My reasoning: It won't be your comfort zone. I've never felt comfortable just doing a 40-hour week, and I think that underlying entrepreneurial spirit keeps me from being comfortable with the mediocre and ordinary (which my job isn't).
I also hang out with a couple people that bootstrapped their own product/service while working a full-time development job and they now run successful businesses by themselves, after running it "on the side" for 1-2 years.
You were an intern there and there were no other engineers? Was it a paid internship or were you their free engineering labor? Now you are going to graduate and get a real job. Their free technical labor is leaving so they offer you a CTO position for no pay until funding? You are most likely getting screwed.
If for some reason you really believe in this company and team and are willing to go without pay, you need to be a cofounder with 10-20+ percent of the company (depending on the number of founders). You are the only technical person and they need you enough to make you CTO.
Anything less and you should run. If they do get funding, as others have said, expect to be replaced, possibly prior to vesting whatever stock you did get. You need a large percent ownership and a single trigger acceleration clause in your contract so you get your stock when they fire you for no reason. [1] Even then you can get diluted to nothing, but with a large percent ownership and accelerated vesting it will be more challenging.
You better really trust these people, believe in the mission, and get a large percent ownership with the right contract. Any hiccups or hesitation from them and you should walk, unless you want to learn first hand the dark side of startup bullshit where you gamble with no pay to make other people rich.
This should trump everything else. Don't listen to excuses, don't believe that "it's a great opportunity for a young person," that "it will enhance your resume," that you will "gain valuable experience."
Do. Not. Work. For. Free.
Once your boss agrees to pay you market salary at least at the junior developer rate, then you can get into your lack of experience and whether or not it's a good idea for you to be CTO (hint: if you're asking, then it's not). But,
Sure go for it. You don't quite know what you want, so take the challenge and learn. Just negotiate fair compensation. Despite what all the commenters are saying, zero salary can be fine if you can make it work...
But it means absolutely that you become a cofounder (> 10% equity). Anything less and you're getting played.
> I really was looking for a stable job, just to get more experience, save some money and eventually become an entrepreneur and create my own company.
I agree what others have written so I'll just add this. In my experience, you'll be happier following your own path rather than waking up one day and realising you've been following someone else's path. If that's what you're really looking for, then that should be a strong indication of what to do.
Wikipedia->CTO: A chief technology officer (CTO), sometimes known as a chief technical officer, is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization.
you: 0 $us until we get funded... save some money and eventually become an entrepreneur.
If you accept a major role in a society, conscious of losing money and time, and you're willing to use your savings in the hope that your work will bring results within a specific time ...
Wiktionary->entrepreneur: A person who organizes and operates a business venture and assumes much of the associated risk..
you: And apparently, they saw my "enthusiasm"
me: if you're willing to work for free between now and May, the enthusiasm is not the first thing that they noticed.
Should I accept a CTO position without much experience?
my answer is Yes! but prepare yourself to an experience that will make you grow up in many different ways ...
I'd carefully weigh any advice received with the experience of the source. Not to say that anyone that has not been in a similar situation had no value. But rather people who have had similar experience will be of more value.
That being said these are the considerations that were in my mind when I was in a similar position.
1. Just like an investor or even more so, how much do I believe in the founder.
2. How confident are you in your abilities. Are you able to cope with stress/uncertainty and preserver in the face of daunting tasks.
3. How much do you believe that there is a business somewhere in there?
If you are enthusiastic about all 3 the risk is worth it. Feat and doubt are poor reasons to not do something. Fear is a good sign to pause and evaluate the situation. There is only one way to find out if you have what it takes. Also if you think taking a low income (or no income) is a big issue now. It only gets harder as you get older. Wife, kids, mortgage and general lifestyle inflation.
It sounds like you're being manipulated into providing your hard work for free. I suspect your boss is trying to take advantage of you, without providing anything at all in return.
Are you really willing to toil away without any income while he sits there comfortably, scheming away, trying to figure out the next best way to rip you off?
Please, don't be afraid to say no to this terrible offer.
Most useless answer so far. Why would I take such an important decision without first getting some feedback from people who already lived the same situation? I am talking to my family every day about this, I am reading online, asking friends in the startup world, etc... Life is not as simple as "Yes" or "No"...
If you cannot learn from others and apply that to your own life and decisions, then you will gonna have a bad time...
I am currently working as a Software Engineer intern at a startup. This internship is like a final thesis for my Master's degree. And apparently, they saw my "enthusiasm" and want me to become the CTO of the startup, the problem is that I do not have that much experience, I have less than 2 years of professional experience (I am only 24 years old) and I only started coding 3 years ago! I really was looking for a stable job, just to get more experience, save some money and eventually become an entrepreneur and create my own company.
But this looks like a way too big jump for me. What if I fail? What if the startup fails because of me? Because basically every single engineer that I would hire would be smarter than me and would have more experience than me. However, none of them would be as motivated or enthusiast as me, I know that.
The other main problem would be my salary, which would basically be 0 $us until we get funded, which, according to my boss, could be in May 2016 or even before that.
This will be a life-changing decision for me, so please, I need your advice.