Normally, in early startup life (<= 5 people), they hire people who have a broad knowledge about a lot of things. Sooner or later, the startup will start hiring people with specialist skills.
You won't get paid well, you'll be paid the bare minimum until they have gone through some sort of funding process (probably angel investment).
Being in a startup isn't like working for a large web firm like Facebook or Twitter, it's more like working in a small office with a group of people trying to find the fun in everything (some startups never become fun). It's also not about doing everything correctly, it's about experimentation with things, finding what's useful.
Joining a startup and hoping for some big IPO payout might not pay off and isn't in the mindset of a startup.
In the end, it's about trying to make some kickass product that does something awesome whilst trying to have fun on a small salary (at least it is at the start)
Also, we like people with interesting pet projects. It helps us easily get a sense of what kind of engineer you are.
(ObPlug: Tasty Labs is hiring. http://www.tastylabs.com/)
For example, I have a project I did in 6 hours, so I know it's not the best code I could write. However, I think it's great to share what you've got. As Seth Godin would say, ship it.
JavaScript may not be your cup of tea, but CoffeeScript is a nice way to program. The community is great; pretty much all of the open source code is on GitHub and there's a strong "jump in and start hacking" vibe. You can do some really neat stuff with socket.io and a bunch of miscellaneous technology. Just jump in and start hacking. It's easy to learn a lot by accident this way.
