This sounds a lot like my situation a few years ago, except that I was both you and the tech lead. The founders were playing me like the dumbass I was - I was t

This sounds a lot like my situation a few years ago, except that I was both you and the tech lead. The founders were playing me like the dumbass I was - I was too busy to spend any time thinking about office politics and what I ought to be doing for myself, not the company. Especially since I had no equity... Lot of good advice in the comments. My view? Absolutely, positively take a vacation first so you can start thinking straight (I never did, in 5 years...) Even just a few days of forcing yourself not to think about things will do good. Only after that, can you really or clearly decide if you want to stay. If you don't have equity, or don't want to deal with this team lead and whatever manipulative political crap you're going to have to deal with, then quit. It is only a job and believe me, walking away as soon as you realize the fight isn't worth it is worth far more than sticking it out for some potential upside that might not include equity. Without equity, everything is meaningless. If you were a corporation, what would the CEO and Board decide? Think like that and one can start getting a handle on how to be not driven by emotional / psychological factors, but purely profit and loss. My personal problem was that I got emotional attached to "my system" - I built the whole damn thing myself and wouldn't/couldn't let it go - the ideas kept flooding in and .... I wanted to see them come to fruition. Technically, the whole system was pretty sweet and I had some really advanced ideas on the to-do list... but I did NOT OWN IT. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.