Pros
Pay can be good. Some decent connections can be made.
Cons
People with the same role and level get paid very differently based on offer negotiation. CEO sees you as a number and makes that very clear from the start. Lots of closed door "high level meetings" where things get decided for without from frontline employees. The avg employee knows more about the customer/industry/product offering than the executive team. Almost everything is about optics. Lots of talk about what company/university/etc people worked at/went to. Not a lot of actual startup product building happening. Most deals are either carried by 1 sales guy or have connections with the CEO. No effective/fair compensation strategy. Company is mostly male. Women occupy mostly junior/intern roles. Executives were open about making hiring decisions based on protected attributes. Some department heads with 1+ years tenure have gotten 0 people they know to join the company. Brain drain pretty heavy- many of the best people have already left. The entire founding team is gone except the CEO. The exec team is cryptic about firings and accountability is limited. Not a lot of admission of mistakes made. Business direction is not principled- the company will go wherever investor sentiment leads (crypto, AI, etc). Probably a decent company if you are getting paid well and can pivot to greener pastures. Not a great place to stick around, unlikely the company will reach a large valuation and will mostly likely get bought by a competitor.