Comment by Eliezer

My intuition would be that functional startups are visibly functional; they feel awesome. If you have to ask whether your startup is dysfunctional, then the key fact is that it's not awesome which I would expect---someone correct me if I'm wrong---that your equity is substantially less likely than usual to be worth much. Sure, there are non-awesome companies that succeed, but maybe they're just the rare examples from the very wide pool of non-awesome companies, or maybe they have founders who were good or lucky at obtaining venture capital or had some other special advantage. What's your company's special advantage? Do you have enough equity, or enough pay, to make it worth more than all the other startups you could join can offer you? Did you graduate from MIT or from Nowheresville college, and are they paying you $60K/year or $110K/year? Every offer has to be understood in comparison to its opportunity costs, the other offers you might get.