My concern is that I am bringing significant technical expertise to the table, and we will be targeting a very specific Saas idea. From a raw income perspective, I can fetch about 2-3x the CEO, and have alot more years of experience. I also have good general people/product skills.
The reason I bring this up, my fear is that I will pound the pavement building the product. Initially the power/direction of the company will be in my hands. But after a few years and de-risking/gaining customers/hitting PMF, the CTO role diminishes significantly relative to the CEO.
I ask because I do see myself resenting this situation. Clearly the answer is to found something myself. But lets put that aside. Has anyone seen issues with this type of dynamic?
I'm not discrediting a non technical person, but the value comes from the software. We already know exactly what we will build.
Secondly, while a CTO should indeed be very technically involved at the early stages, it is a business role at the end of the day. Your goal is to build a healthy business, not code up the cleanest architecture or deliver the most beautiful product (though you'll probably need to do these as well). As a cofounder, you will be dealing with customers, with risk mitigation, with all sorts of things that are only tangentially related to technology. This attitude of "value comes from software" is something I see often from engineers, who miss the fact that code is a means to an end. There is a lot more to a successful business than writing code. To answer your question, I do think that you're likely to encounter friction with other senior/executive leadership as long as that is your worldview.
Might be worth reading The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman. He covers the topic of cofounding with others, and also talks about optimizing for control vs money (spoiler, if you go for the former, you will likely have a lot less of the latter).
Well, to be honest, you ARE discrediting the co founder based on everything you wrote. You clearly don't have faith and trust in this person that you are co founding with.
I suggest you think very hard before jumping into this with this person because you will end up resenting them a lot as you already are.
Perhaps you need to think about what this person can truly bring to the table and when its just 2 of you, there is no real CEO work. It is mostly sell, build, sell, sell, market, build, sell (something like that)
So, ask yourself: can this person help sell and get customers while you "pound the pavement" in your own words.
"but the value comes from the software"
This is the red flag for me. It seems like you think software does all the magic. It doesn't. Trust me. Software is the means to an end. yes the product needs to be good but in the early days, you need to be able to figure out how to validate the market and find customers who may use something that you are building.
Source: A technical founder in 8th year of business and technical stuff is 40%.
All the best. I said everything to help (hopefully).
It begs the question: what's the other person for? As that other person does more they might get more...or they might not.
One thing I've learned in tech is that sales is much more important than product. There are people who can sell stuff that isn't built. There are even more people that can build stuff that doesn't sell. Don't be that guy.
i.e. If they generate a certain monthly recurring revenue, they get 50% of the company. Less than that they get nothing.
If the non-technical person is so pointless (not to discredit them), then go ahead and build it without them. Create the value yourself.
Really? How? If the business keeps growing, the tech will too.