Those who joined an early stage start up that successfully exited. Was it worth taking the lower pay for equity?
The tricky part of your question is "successfully exited". For most people, its a successful exit if they did well at exit. You should seek feedback from all startup employees. By definition, a startup is a company looking for a business (model). If a company such as Uber has already found a business model and working on scaling, it's no longer a start-up. So define what you mean by "start-up" if you are looking for useful responses.
Start up as in pre seeding round with only recently (like a year) having a business model “defined” as in still evolving
Sorry just passing the pre seeding around
Startup equity as a non-founder makes literally no sense if you are at FANG or other well paying employers. Do it for the experience, do it for the chance to grow quickly (but don’t expect FANG to share opinion of the value of it), or do it for fun. But don’t think it’s worth doing it for the money.
Worth it for the experience and career progression. If fhe equity ends up having value consider is lucky.
For me. Yes. Even if my startup didnt go big. Then again I believe in GO BIG OR GO HOME.
Expected value is less than working at a top tech company that is public. But $$$ shouldn't be the biggest reason why you want to work at a startup. Go change the world!
No. I've seen at exit that is in the top 10 silicon Valley has seen in the last decade. It still didn't match FANG due to the lower salary
Which one?
Also depends when you join.
Nobody joins startup for money. It’s all about learning, increased responsibility and accountability and build something from scratch. Money is absolutely secondary when you are joining startup.
If you do your research and find a startup with a well documented plan to IPO, sometimes a small paycut can pay huge dividends down the line
I don't trust any business that won't pay market rate. I worked at a startup and got options and a decent pay bump. I always assume the options will be worth $0.
Usually no. Most startups will fail. But all dollars have value.