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It sounds as though the company has no product, no traction, and no investment. So, to work for stock alone you should insist on being an equal co-founder -- especially if you are crucial to building the software and taking on identical risk. If he claims you are a co-founder, he should also share the cap table with you for verification and to show he trusts you as a co-founder.

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The company has drivers and a shop which will do all online orders via them. They will also be featured in magazines promoting their business.

They have no investment because they want to increase value by doing first and then scale up via investment. Is this called bootstrapping?

I'm not sure if I want to be a co-founder with an equal share since that would force me to go all in on the business idea.

I am interested in the idea of working close to self-employed and create new services which can grow. It's just the "no-salary until date X" deal I'm unsure about. I'm thinking about suggesting some alternative contract offer.

You can be a co-funder, a two digits equity and not be involved in the commercial part of the business. (But you must trust the other co-founders.) Just imagine that you get a fancy title like CTO :).

Also, get everything in writing before starting to work: "Oral contracts are not worth the paper they are written on."

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