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While you may be young, you're smart. You already noticed that there's an issue with your lack of experience. The question is: How do you solve that issue? You

While you may be young, you're smart. You already noticed that there's an issue with your lack of experience. The question is: How do you solve that issue? Your success as CTO is mostly determined by yourself. Understand what's required of you. Start interviewing other CTOs at other startups and understand what their roles are and what they need to do. Build relationships with them so that you have a network of advisors if you ever need someone to have a chat with. Learn a lot. Do a lot of research. Do a lot of thinking. Leadership is not all about experience. Leadership is also about listening. And all leaders start from somewhere. Once you have an open mind to learn, you'll realize that being a leader is about being courageous and responsible for the happiness of other people. It's also about helping to steer the ship in the right direction. But with all startups, you're making decisions on minimal information. What you need is a mind of learning. Test and learn and never assume you know it all. Then you'll be fine. The salary issue is another big issue. Would it be worth to trade away your salary for the experience that you get? How will you survive? Do you have enough savings? Do you have a backup plan? If you're not getting any salary, then you should get significant amount of equity. And at this stage, as the CTO, will you also have to build the product? Job titles at early stage don't matter much. Lastly, do you trust your boss enough that he will steer the ship correctly? Do you think he has what it takes to make it all work? And how is your relationship with him? Will he listen to your opinions or is he going to make all the decisions by himself? Good luck

Perados 11y ago
My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies and he is basically wanting to "test" me. At least that is what he says, but I definitely think he has what it takes to steer the ship correctly. We are currently being incubated, and all our mentors are very successful entrepreneurs and just by asking them the same question I posted here, I already learnt a lot. How would I survive? A loan maybe? I can survive with less than 1000 $us a month. So far I've been surviving with a part-time job, but as a CTO I would need to work full time, so that would not be an option anymore. Savings? None. Backup plan? Well, getting a normal software engineering job, and an average life I guess. Yes, I would probably have to help building the product as well. I am up to the challenge, it is just a little bit scary. Thank you very much for your answer.
- corobo 11y ago
  > My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies Forgive me for possibly appearing to attack your boss here as it's not my intention, but do you know what happened to those companies? Without that information for all you know they went bankrupt as he kept making interns the CxO As for surviving without income all I can say is don't take debt lightly. While in my case I can only blame myself I was in debt for the majority of the past 10 years due to supplementing low income. Eventually the loans/overdrafts/cards stop coming and you're dead in the water without a paddle. If this company does not succeed before that point (where success is defined as the company not only being funded but much more importantly - you actually get paid) you will have gotten into debt for no reason. It's a very risky move, one which I would never advise someone do for another person's company unless they had a really good reason to disagree with me
- tixocloud 11y ago
  No problem. It'll be good to get an understanding of "if you're not being compensated by salary then what are you compensated with?" It sounds like you're literally taking the same amount of risk as your boss and for that reason, you should have some share in whatever rewards that come out of the risk taking. Money to survive has to come from somewhere (i.e. loan, parents, savings, etc.) but it definitely doesn't appear out of nowhere. Also, evaluate the product. How long do you think they can reach the point where it's revenue generating? In the absence of revenue and cash runs out, will they start to fund raise again? Will all the other expenses be comfortably covered by the current cash pool? It also comes down to a lot of luck as well. There's really no right or wrong answer here and no one can say for sure if it'll be a success or not. But that's the fun part of life. And trust me, even if you have a normal software engineering job, the success is also always down to you. And the benefits are that you manage to build relationships with other talented software developers and you'd be bringing in money that you can save to start your own venture in the future. Many people have also been very successful starting companies later down in life. Nothing is ever a dead end. Every path has a pros and cons. It's ultimately up to us to open our minds to see it and leverage it.
- NumberCruncher 11y ago
  >> My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies He is experienced in what? In ripping of the interns? He as a "very experienced guy" is not able to get a loan of 6k and to pay you 1k monthly in cash until the company gets founded or dies? He wants to test you? Yeah, he wants to see whether you are ready to work for free! Come on, that must be a joke!

Perados 11y ago

My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies and he is basically wanting to "test" me. At least that is what he says, but I definitely think he has what it takes to steer the ship correctly. We are currently being incubated, and all our mentors are very successful entrepreneurs and just by asking them the same question I posted here, I already learnt a lot. How would I survive? A loan maybe? I can survive with less than 1000 $us a month. So far I've been surviving with a part-time job, but as a CTO I would need to work full time, so that would not be an option anymore. Savings? None. Backup plan? Well, getting a normal software engineering job, and an average life I guess. Yes, I would probably have to help building the product as well. I am up to the challenge, it is just a little bit scary. Thank you very much for your answer.

corobo 11y ago
> My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies Forgive me for possibly appearing to attack your boss here as it's not my intention, but do you know what happened to those companies? Without that information for all you know they went bankrupt as he kept making interns the CxO As for surviving without income all I can say is don't take debt lightly. While in my case I can only blame myself I was in debt for the majority of the past 10 years due to supplementing low income. Eventually the loans/overdrafts/cards stop coming and you're dead in the water without a paddle. If this company does not succeed before that point (where success is defined as the company not only being funded but much more importantly - you actually get paid) you will have gotten into debt for no reason. It's a very risky move, one which I would never advise someone do for another person's company unless they had a really good reason to disagree with me
tixocloud 11y ago
No problem. It'll be good to get an understanding of "if you're not being compensated by salary then what are you compensated with?" It sounds like you're literally taking the same amount of risk as your boss and for that reason, you should have some share in whatever rewards that come out of the risk taking. Money to survive has to come from somewhere (i.e. loan, parents, savings, etc.) but it definitely doesn't appear out of nowhere. Also, evaluate the product. How long do you think they can reach the point where it's revenue generating? In the absence of revenue and cash runs out, will they start to fund raise again? Will all the other expenses be comfortably covered by the current cash pool? It also comes down to a lot of luck as well. There's really no right or wrong answer here and no one can say for sure if it'll be a success or not. But that's the fun part of life. And trust me, even if you have a normal software engineering job, the success is also always down to you. And the benefits are that you manage to build relationships with other talented software developers and you'd be bringing in money that you can save to start your own venture in the future. Many people have also been very successful starting companies later down in life. Nothing is ever a dead end. Every path has a pros and cons. It's ultimately up to us to open our minds to see it and leverage it.
NumberCruncher 11y ago
>> My boss is a very experienced guy, he founded many companies He is experienced in what? In ripping of the interns? He as a "very experienced guy" is not able to get a loan of 6k and to pay you 1k monthly in cash until the company gets founded or dies? He wants to test you? Yeah, he wants to see whether you are ready to work for free! Come on, that must be a joke!