I would be serving the CTO function<p>Last time I did a trial I did two weeks of unpaid work shipping an entire feature only to be removed suddenly from the repo :/<p>interested to hear the best way
Personally, I wouldn't be a cofounder with anyone that I didn't already know and trust, so "trialing" one isn't something I'd do.
Honestly if you don't know a person IRL I wouldn't do unpaid work like that. You're basically unprotected as a cofounder, so there's an incentive for people to be unscrupulous. Maybe make a deal to pay money into an escrow account that goes back to the company if you get signed as an official cofounder.