Number 0 is: evaluate the character of the founders and the people you're working with.<p>I had a contract to build a website - the general idea seemed sound and I was lead it would serve as a calling card to attract more investment; it was just one building block of a larger picture. But I didn't do any background checks on the founders and the guy who recommended me to them I had known and worked with for a decade.<p>Fast forward 4 years later - I'm still quasi-employee #1 (and the only one, the 2 other part time contractors quit because as I learned later, they were tired of getting paid late), the company is now selling data to enterprise level customers (instead of to 'consumers' in this market) so the workload has increased... and I'm working on weekends trying to keep up with the IT needs... while constantly being paid late.<p>I finally wised up / burnt out when it became apparent the CEO had 'negotiated in bad faith' with a enterprise customer and they were threatening to sue unless they got exactly the data they'd paid for. Yes, I made a ton of mistakes and I hope no one else ever does what I did! I ignored all the warnings signs over the years because I got so caught up in the work due to various personal stuff. The whole company (me and 2 salesguys) quit in the space of 2 months and had to go thru months of hell trying to get what we were owed.<p>The guy who introduced me to them finally decided he should have told me of the fraud the CEO pulled 30 years ago, the other founder (who has a criminal record as I recently found out) told me of the CEO's fraud in his other business, one salesguy told me of the multiple identities the CEO was managing to make it seem like there were more employees... the list goes on.<p>Character matters. Contracts are worthless in comparison unless you have the resources (i.e. enough lawyers and money) to tangle with the other side - and bad actors know this fact, and how to twist contracts into balloon animals. Business ethics may be an oxymoron in the real world, but ... my story is a perfect example of why they should be fundamental / mandatory and the inherent flaws of capitalism.<p>Now the CEO has divorced his wife, who funded most of the company, and is trying to walk off with it having it valued at $350k, while a real estimate is that it's worth a few million.