Honestly this sounds terrible. From what you have said it seems fairly clear that you are being exploited by the CEO / others. And what does it even mean that the CEO (who presumably owns a large portion of the company) went without pay for two year when he is independently wealthy? You sound quite intelligent so just think about it, if he was paying himself a salary it would just be transferring money from his bank account to his bank account again, all while being taxed. The fact that this is used as a mitigating factor to argue that you are not getting screwed is absurd, for your sake I hope you go out to the marketplace and get paid what you deserve.