Ask HN: Need advice about co-founding a startup with a VC and equity
Do they have any other companies in their portfolio that they have already implemented this structure?  Can you talk to the non-VC staff?<p>If you&#x27;re not raising money, you&#x27;re not doing the CEO job.  My guess is they&#x27;re willing to back you but see that you don&#x27;t have the business experience to be CEO (and if you&#x27;re the CEO, you&#x27;re not going to be doing the engineering work you need to be doing to build the company).  In this scenario is the single fund providing all of the $2.85MM? Is there a board? Who does the VC&#x2F;CEO answer to?  Do they see their role as interim (i.e. support you to a point where you could become CEO, or get the company going until it can bring in a salaried CEO)? Or permanent?<p>Do you want to be the CEO? or the CTO?<p>I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s perfect, but a scenario where someone is bankrolling you and providing a CEO to handle the CEO b.s. while you build the company is also not that bad given the current funding environment.  I&#x27;d look for some formal role definitions both on personnel as well as business (i.e. does the incubator provide basic business resources like HR assistance, payroll assistance, so that you&#x27;re not burning precious seed $$ on that?).<p>Ask them to put in some protections for you in writing.<p>I mean, it sounds like they want to build the company around you and offload the crappy bureaucracy of running a company that you admittedly don&#x27;t have experience with.  Yes, they absolutely get a chunk of the upside out of it, but you get to focus on building the product. 10% equity seems low but they’re bringing the seed round in to fund the company and you’re getting a decent base salary.  I&#x27;d ask for accelerated vesting and something to protect your equity from dilution through at least a Series A.