I had a situation somewhat similar to this and I quit pretty quickly. Details if anyone cares (and if other people who were there show up and want to correct a

I had a situation somewhat similar to this and I quit pretty quickly. Details if anyone cares (and if other people who were there show up and want to correct any details I get wrong, go for it, this was ~20 years ago): It was a hardware/software startup, linux on a mips chip, building a low power personal webserver with an admin interface for naive users. I joined in 1998, I was hired to run the software side of it. I was not a co-founder, they were up to about 11 people if I remember correctly, but I was told that I'd be treated as one. They gave me 3% of the company which seemed high enough that they were serious so I believed them. Things were a mess when I got there, no version control, no nightly builds, no backups, everything was ad hoc. Fixing this stuff was easy, it's software dev 101. So I got the basics sorted and started working on a schedule. The founders were headed towards a board meeting and wanted to tell the board that the software would be ready in 3 months. I protested and said that was nuts, we are doing a kernel bring up (Linux on MIPs was barely a thing at that point). They pushed hard for their 3 months deadline. I went and talked to Bill Earl who has done more OS bringups on MIPS than anyone else I knew (and probably anyone else period). He asked how far we were, how stable was the compiler, did the kernel boot, did we have anything working in userland, etc. Standard stuff that anyone would ask trying to get a handle on it. He was actually pretty positive, we were fairly far along, userland was mostly working. He said "well, it's possible that you could get there in 3 months". I asked "would you bet your kids college fund on it?" He said "hell no, 3 months is if everything goes perfectly. One compiler bug will double that time, so would one kernel bug" (obviously he meant a nasty bug, not something trivial, and he's right, I've seen 3 month slips because of something that was hard to find, I've seen much longer as well). So I go back to the founders and say 3 months is a pipe dream, it's possible but extremely unlikely. And I asked to be at the board meeting, I was the director of software, there was no software VP, so the buck stopped with me. They said no. I resigned as soon as I could put together a resignation letter. Plot twist: I should have stayed (if money was the point). Sun later bought them for $2B in stock in the doc com hey day. On paper, assuming there had been no dilution (which I'm sure there was) I would have been worth $60M. Oh, well, shoulda coulda woulda.