toocool

Consulting might as well be an option, if I just had more free time. The problem is that we are still early enough that I have to work a lot, and it completely drains my professional energy (nowhere close to a burnout, a "healty" draining)

> Does the startup have technical founders?

Yes, one.

> How many rounds of investment have you guys taken on?

Seed and Series A. A new round might be coming soon.

> How many employees have an equal or higher title than you?

On the technical side, nobody (except the founder), but that will change soon as the engineering team is expanding.

> Is your role in technical and possibly business development integral enough where it would be really difficult to replace?

I like to think that it would be difficult enough, because of the know how acquired from having worked from day 1 and for the potential contribution that I can still give to the technical execution.

> Does the company have enough of a runway to figure things out if you left?

The company is well structured, so it will definitely survive, but that being said I'm without doubts the employee who would cause the biggest, albeit reparable, damage if he left.

Thanks

Thanks for the wisdom, appreciated :)

Thanks for your reply. That's an incredibly sound advice, and I feel like I missed a detail in my post: the contribution that I'm giving to this company is requiring me to work a lot (not like crazy, but let's say a good average of 50 hours a week), so I really don't have the spare bandwidth to start a serious pet project that could lead somewhere else than just simply playing with some technology for the sake of it.

The funny thing is that where we are based (LA-area), there's no scarcity at all of developers jobs, so, as I said, the main reason why the founders are getting away with this is because they managed to find people "naive enough" to think that you should be lucky if you are severely underpaid and at the end of the year you get a performance bonus that might make up for the difference.