Need help evaluating startup compensation
Hi guys, I'm a backend software engineer (mostly into distributed systems & c++). Worked at couple of big companies and a late startup. I have 9+ years of experience. Now, i have an offer from an early stage startup company (not even series A) funded by vc. They have 4 million funding. Founders were my coworkers at my previous company, I directly worked with one of them. They offered me 152k base (with a promise of correcting it within an year to market value) and 0.7 percent in equity. I took 45k cut in just the base salary and 15k cut in bonus. They already have few paid customers with multiple pocs in the pipeline. Is my overall compensation fair? Especially, is my equity fair? I haven't negotiated much as I was new to evaluating early stage startup equity's and they said they don't have any room for salary adjustments (as per him, founders are making just 10k more in salary). Please help me evaluate my offer. Is 0.7 equity in ballpark of average? Btw, I'm employee number 8 (excluding founders).
Ask for more. I have been offered as much as 4 percent in similar situation with base of 200k. They are low balling you big time.
How can you say that without more context? I shouldn’t have to say that all equity is not created equal
In my opinion, until the company reaches to profitable stage or a unicorn; the co founders should earn just enough to live paycheck to paycheck. So you earning less than them plus have less equity than them is not something i would appreciate
Your equity is worth $0, ask for a higher base and don't buy into any silly promises that it'll get increased later. The time to negotiate an increase is now
Early stage startups don't give that much salary - they need to control their run rate, and in my experience, they even tell you during offer that they don't compete on salary with bigger companies. How do you negotiate if that's their stance? Are they bluffing?
That's what they said.. I took what they gave
Depends on what you want or whether the company will succeed. 95% company will not beat FAANG financially. If you hit the other 5%, they will on par or exceed what you got from FAANG. Even the same package, you enjoy tax benefits than W2 only.
0.7 is not bad and fair for 8th employee.