Hi, I think your post is very interesting, because as an individual programmer attempting to start my own startup, I've found (over and over again!) that the one thing I've needed more than anything else was a DevOps/SRE guy who could make sure the Website/Server/Database was up and running and healthy, 24/7. Now, I'm not in startup mode anymore -- I'm on hiatus. And, when I was in startup mode, I had very little $$$, so I wouldn't have been able to pay you that well.
But, here's the thing. If you can tough it out without too much money, you might be able to find say 20 startups who are willing to trade some percentages of stock for your services, and in a year or so, if one of them does really well, you might be able to cash out. Now what's neat is that when you're not asking for $$$, your bargaining position is increased hugely. So you could offer a service where say every 8 hours you check a site and you don't spend more than 5 minutes servicing it (if even that). You just basically check, reboot services if they're not healthy (maybe send an email too), and you're on your way to the next customer. If any startup starts to do well, you're then in a prime negotiating position to get X hours at $Y dollars, and whatever kind of schedule you like...
