(This post is meant to be frank and only slightly provocative...) As a builder of a company for more than a decade (a lifestyle, not Start-Up (VC-fuelled)), th

(This post is meant to be frank and only slightly provocative...) As a builder of a company for more than a decade (a lifestyle, not Start-Up (VC-fuelled)), the hard part about starting up is NOT the tech. You might be a really good developer, but that definitely does not translate into being a good CTO. Most common problem is being bogged down by technical perfection and rewriting until the company dies. (I have seen that happen at least ten times with companies in my network) A CTO is a "chief officer", i.e. his/her focus should be on the survival and growth of the company. That means choosing how to act in an environment, where there is always to little money and too little time and past decisions unfortunate to fix-up.. Add to that, that when the company grows, you need to heard cats as a lot of devs are not really good at negotiating technical matters as equals.. I must admit that for me the "no business experience" would be a dealbreaker for a CTO... Balancing the liquidity versus total cost is one of the hardest problems I have ever encountered... (and that is going to be your problem even if you get a big tank of jetfuel (VC-money), the burnrate will probably still kill you if unmanaged). Add to that, that your business partner is going to be the most influential person in your life (even more than your spouse likely), just getting "matched" is not that easy. A family member of mine bought 50% of a company (not IT) and the other part stayed there as CTO (he was the sole owner and CEO before). The ended up almost-hating each other but being forced to stay together for most of another decade (due to both having a lot of skin in the game). The day the sold the company was the second last day they ever talked, the day the signed the final corporate report for that year was the last... Notice neither was a bad person, they we just badly matched (personality wise, skill wise, vision wise...) and entered something they should have stayed out of.. It didn't help that both had invested their whole livelihood in the deal.. So to recap: - to enter a co-owner/founder role, you really need to know the other person, like the other person and trust the other person as much as a family member... Otherwise you are likely doomed or unhappy for a lot of your immediate future - being a CTO (especially as co-founder) is a vastly different that just being a dev with better salary and the final say. - experience matters - so does 10+ years of preparation to your "overnight success". - business is hard, most fail...