The number one thing is whatever the number you end up with, you MUST be ok with it. If you don’t and are resentful you will eventually quit. Startups are hard so negotiate and wherever you end up, make sure it’s something you are ok with.

Everyone should vest. Split three ways and if she does not work and leaves in less than a year she gets nothing.

200% annual growth with 22% margins is unlikely to be venture back able. That does not mean it’s not a great business that can get to millions in ebitda, only that you should avoid spinning your wheels with institutional VCs with your current metrics. Angels are different, and you could well find someone in your city down to be part of this.

Some advice on asking for internships at startups… I am founder of a 11 person YC backed startup and get 2-5 internship requests per day. We do not hire or interview any but have a standard reply we send to all. Interns need a ton of training as by definition they don’t have much in the way of experience and skills so really what they can offer is energy. And that is great! But in my view for a less than a 50 person startup that is fast growing has very little capacity to onboard an intern. Basically, target companies of +50 plus people. And most importantly say one specific thing you can help the founder solve. Saying, ‘I will help with anything’ is really bad. Because you are making the founder the one to figure out what to do with you. Rather say, I will make 50 cold calls a day for your sales team. Or, I will manually QA every new feature on staging before it’s pushed to prod. Or, I will pretend to be you on LinkedIn and reach out to software engineering candidates you are trying to hire and book in calls with them. If you get that specific you are way more likely to be considered as you are clearly willing to do what an early stage startup needs.