Ultimately you need to choose the right option for yourself, no one else can tell you what that would be.

Some folks thrive in situations where they are working out of discipline. Some folks succeed as long as they have something to look forward to further in the journey. Other folks will quickly burn out if they’re working long hours on something they don’t engage deeply with.

Each of these approaches have their own strengths, it’s just a matter of learning about yourself and where your preferences & abilities are.

IMO, your boss missed an opportunity. He could have still tried to compete in that market - heck, some competition is good for you, and in the later stages a prereq for mainstream acceptance.

It’s healthy to assume other folks already have the same idea as you. You just need to understand the customer pain points better and execute better. Hey, even 2nd place competitors can drive ideas forward and end up with market share.

Actually, stealth startups generally don’t get to test for product-market fit, which means they’re often leagues behind the folks doing it out in the open. The advice I always hear is just to get it out there and start testing.

We all get misses sometimes, in entrepreneurship or otherwise. The only danger is if that dissuades you from trying again. Good luck!

Y’know, it probably feels like most of the commenters here aren’t giving you the advice you’re looking for. Everyone says leave, but that’s not what you asked, right?

I’ve been in your shoes before. Not exactly, but similar situation with CEO problems. I was in leadership there. We *all* tried to talk to the CEO. Actually, it was our impulse to help, and the feeling of importance from trying to save the day, that kept us chained to the sinking ship. Every glimmer of hope meant another six months wasted. That may be why folks aren’t giving you viable routes within the company.

But, maybe that’s not respecting your question enough. Here are a couple things we tried or could have tried:

1. Talk to the CEO respectfully with the best argument you have. Given his personality, it could be a “motivate by challenge” conversation. Like “I’ve always wanted to learn about how startups work, and I’ve learned so much being here. Lately I’ve been reading [esteemed author] and I realized how hard it was to do [steps we should be taking that are also glorious]. Most people fail at that stage. Have you thought about how our company could handle that situation?” (one such book is Crossing the Chasm, but maybe there’s a closer match?). Or the wake up-threat angle, or your best facts-loaded arguments.
2. Rally the troops and try to have an intervention with the boss, where everyone says the same thing. This can also backfire spectacularly.
3. Rally the troops and talk to the investors. Share the dirty secrets. Propose alternate leadership, and if you have the legal leverage, try to stay in charge of the new CEO selection process.
4. Everyone jumps ship together and starts a new startup together in that space, building the thing that the CEO should have been building.

Noting here that each of these options has potential legal risks, risks to your reputation and hire-ability in the future, or risks in giving yourself false hope and wasting your time.

What do other posters think? Assuming OP is dead set on not leaving, what options would folks recommend?

Congrats on making it to this point! :D

Here’s where the fun begins. There’s a chance that folks will love what you built right out of the box. If that happens, you are part of a very small but esteemed group.

Most likely, you’ll get little to no folks interested at first. This is absolutely normal. You’re at the startling line, not the finish line here. Right now you are about to embark on the gloried hunt for product-market fit.

Have you read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries? One of the best programmers I know recommended it to me when I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It’s like a bible for many folks in Silicon Valley, and it will introduce you to how this can work, including the role of marketing.

If you don’t want to deal with launching, talking to customers, marketing, and all, find a non-technical cofounder who shares your values. There are many of them out there looking for what you have to offer.

Good luck!

Peter Thiel invested in a previous startup I was at. His advice to the founder: Don’t give any employee more than 2%.

It sounds like your startup is seed stage? $152k in a seed stage is on the high end. Unless it’s a role like head of finance or ML engineer, may be getting overpaid. This is its own risk: Folks will expect a lot from you and be frustrated if you can’t fix everything. Alternatively, the founder could be less sure of common practices and overspending. That $3M runs out a lot more quickly than you’d think.

You also can’t cash in on that 2% for a long time, if ever. AND you have to pay for it before you can cash it out - you don’t own the equity, only the options.

If you want a higher salary, join big tech. Folks don’t typically stay in startups for the salary. Rather, startups can be a great opportunity to elevating your career, and you’re working in a dynamic environment where your work and ideas matter.

You absolutely shouldn’t have to brainstorm how to fix your programmer’s bugs.

It sounds like you two weren’t a good fit. Maybe he was unethical, or maybe there were other issues. You wrote that you were eventually telling him “how” to do things; that’s not a level of interaction you should have to take or that most programmers I know would be comfortable with. A non-technical boss should just be telling developers the requirements and ideally the “why”, not the “how”.

You might want a technical cofounder, or an engineer who’d be willing to walk you through best practices in working with them. This will help you learn and set expectations for leading programming teams in the future.

In many startups, the early work can be heavily tilted towards the business side. You have to figure out what you’re building before you want to actually start building. This means talking to customers, building a landing page, ad campaign, etc. Some companies may need more early technical development, but you’ve got problems if the business-side cofounder isn’t doing this.

It’s actually quite a talent to survive 5 years without an MVP.

The CEO you’re describing is not listening to his board, to his employees, or to his customers. He doesn’t seem trained in this area or attempting to learn.

Folks like this typically don’t learn until they fail hard at something (and sometimes not even then). But the period in which a CEO is failing can be excruciating for the team supporting them.

Do you have some professional goal for staying longer? Otherwise, don’t buy into the sunk costs; there are better jobs out there.

Do you want to be an entrepreneur with that ten grand?

Find a problem. Talk to the people around you: What are their pain points in life? At college, there will be many people around you, unfortunately most of them are students or faculty, and education is a very slow business to grow. So you may want to get in touch with more diverse folks ;)

Figure out how to solve said problem. Not all problems are easily solved even with today’s tech. There are some great Y Combinator videos on ‘what startup ideas work’.

Check with folks if that solution actually solves their problem. Prepare to be surprised, pivot, and ask again… many times.

Create a landing page, small ad campaign, and get market validation. Then you can recruit a couple friends or freelancers to build it. Ah, make sure you have contracts. Don’t be like the Winkelvoss twins.

But really, make sure you’re enjoying your college years. Good luck!

Hi rem4ik4ever :)

First comment: Unclear value statement at readers’ first glance. You don’t say it til the very end, “Unlock Efficient Booking!”. E.g. check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/17tjr3i/i\_analyzed\_100\_hero\_sections\_of\_mostly\_saas/

Have you looked at other businesses doing this? How do they do it?

This could be useful for booths at amusement parks, where they already have the physical hardware (“shoot the bullseye”). How would you get physical wheels to the businesses? If it’s virtual, how would customers trust that it’s not rigged?

Thinking as a customer, I probably wouldn’t be interested in something that’s pure luck. I’d be more interested in something that’s skills-based. Like, if I were buying something that was $34, I might pay an extra $1 for a shot at the prize. So this could be a ‘guess the president’ trivia game or ‘shoot the bullseye’ instead of ‘spin the wheel’. Actually, I’d probably pay an extra $1 for a shot at even a $50 prize as long as the challenge sounds fun. The prize also sounds more attainable at $50 than at $50k.

But I’m not a gambler :) Maybe this is more interesting to folks who buy lotto tickets?

If you do the paperwork yourself, LLCs can be ~$100 to form - not sure about Florida. But that depends on whether you’re willing to be your own registered agent and expose your mailing address. If you need to pay someone as your registered agent, write your operating agreement, etc, that can be $500-$900 not including the insurance. You may also have minimum required taxes each year. BTW: don’t trust those review sites that say agencies will form LLCs for you for $150ish, they’re totally off.

LLCs are a great way to protect your personal assets, but they can be expensive to form *unless* you handle it all yourself.

Are you fully confident this business will work out? How much do you expect to make, and what’s your risk tolerance with your initial clientele while you’re just starting out? These are all important considerations.