If you are the only product developer at a company, you are not a "coder". The correct title would be Director of Product Development, or VP of Software Engineering.
VCs rarely fund a business person without a technical person as part of the package. That person is CTO or VP Eng. They, having committed and worked before money, will be a co-founder and receive a fair bit of equity.
A first employee is somebody who comes after funding. They are hired to help build. They may have a variety of skills that will come in handy later. But early on, they, like the technical cofounder, are their to code, code, code.