Sure, but you should just be aware that "wanting to do engineering" probably is stopping you from financial freedom/a more interesting life. Just be aware of the tradeoff
> aware that "wanting to do engineering" probably is stopping you from financial freedom/a more interesting life.
This only makes sense if you assume the startup will fail and you ignore all of the high-paying engineering jobs out there.
If financial freedom is the goal, the easier and far more reliable path is to pursue the well-trodden road to a job in Big Tech and put some minimal effort into the promotion process.
The average startup founder does not walk away with financial freedom or even a functional company. The average outcome is that the startup doesn't work out and they pay the opportunity cost of having lost out on years of career income.
Even the acqui-hires and small time acquisitions that happen in my local startup scene rarely leave the founders with more money than they could have earned at a regular 9-5 engineering or EM role.
It's only a select few who get that coveted large exit that turns into financial freedom after 5-15 years of grinding.
I find this a cynical and possibly incorrect take. I'll admit, if your goal is to become a billionaire and command vast sums of cash from your many vacation homes I'd agree with you, but financial freedom and an interesting life is absolutely within reach without having to take a career path that doesn't bring you fulfillment. Those CTOs that get pushed out once the company reaches their series C almost certainly achieve financial freedom.
> some typical b2b saas that makes 500k-5M in ARR.
The typical B2B SaaS startup never gets that far.
You're looking at a survivorship bias subset. If someone had an automatic path to get to that promised land then it would be an easy choice, but it's never that easy.
A 500K ARR SaaS is also hardly a path to financial freedom. That's too small to hire a competent engineer while also paying yourself a high salary, so you're basically on call all of the time. You're also doing sales, customer support, and possibly fretting a sudden 100K drop in your ARR if your biggest customer cancels their contract because the economy changes.
There is a non tangible level of status that comes with being CEO of a profitable startup. People dont know but it helps in both dating life and social situations. After the startup, employers consider the CEO the guy that was responsible for the success. Its a huge deal, most people have no clue how the whole thing works
> There is a non tangible level of status that comes with being CEO of a profitable startup.
All of your comments in this thread assume success. Great if you can get it, but it's not guaranteed.
> People dont know but it helps in both dating life and social situations.
Much less than you think. Some people are impressed by it, but spend some time in a startup-heavy area everyone will see right through the "I'm a startup CEO" schtick for someone who has a $500K ARR B2B SaaS, or even just someone trying to fork off and do their own thing.
While it is impressive to start and run a successful small-scale SaaS, it's far from guaranteed. Thinking it's a route to dating success is just weird.
$500K ARR often sounds more impressive than it is. How much of that is profit? Probably not much. Every SaaS startup I've worked for was bleeding money on cloud costs and employees.
Even after all the layoffs and cost-cutting one of them went through, the end result was mediocre paying jobs for a few people at most, with constant on call and fire fighting. One ended in a "acquisition", which was actually a pennies-on-the-dollar fire sale, with no payouts to the founder or any employees. The former CEO still talks up the big acquisition. It sounds like success if you ignore all the details.
> One ended in a "acquisition", which was actually a pennies-on-the-dollar fire sale, with no payouts to the founder or any employees. The former CEO still talks up the big acquisition. It sounds like success if you ignore all the details.
This happens a lot. A company wants to recruit someone who has good skills but has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get their own startup off the ground. They offer an "acquisition" on paper which purchases the company and brings them into the company for a token amount. This gives the founder an easy out, a job, a hiring bonus, and a way to update their LinkedIn to show that they built and "sold" a company.
Yes. Whenever someone says they "had an acquisition", I take it with a grain of salt. The majority of the time it's an acqui-hire or fire sale with a neutral or negative outcome.
