Anecdata... I was having good talks with an early startup founded by a couple and a third person. They all were smart and nice and capable and experienced, an

Anecdata... I was having good talks with an early startup founded by a couple and a third person. They all were smart and nice and capable and experienced, and I was leaning towards joining. Though I was a little wary that they were all friends and I'd probably be a non-founder, and aware that usually a couple-like imbalance of power/relationship among the co-founders can be tricky. (I've seen this in detail elsewhere.) (Relevant background: I'm probably best right now as a technical cofounder who'd solo build the MVP software and infra, and then switch to building&leading engineering as the company grows. But I was also open to being a founding engineer, with the right team and arrangement.) After the good meetings with the team, for further diligence, I had an extended one-on-one with the third person, on what they'd already built, architecture, and their roadmap for the next year or so, and also to get more familiar with each other. After talking, I indicated that it looked like the third fo-co-founder had everything covered, and didn't actually need me. Then this third co-founder was speaking more candidly, and indicated that they wanted to herd junior developers to do what remained. My impression was that the co-founders weren't in-sync on hiring someone like me, so I decided to leave things at letting the co-founders regroup. Speculation: Since I'd found them through a strong personal referral, it might've been a "hire of opportunity", rather than a kind of hiring they'd all decided beforehand that they needed right now. And if the referral came in through a contact of the couple co-founders, it's possible that was an edge case in which a dynamic of two co-founders who're especially close -- no matter how conscientious -- might've inadvertently resulted in the third co-founder having been less in the loop in that instance, and railroaded by circumstances. I think that particular exceptionally good team will figure out whatever comes their way. But startups are all about learning, and there will be learning opportunities even around things you know and had handled.