Can any PMs or SWEs working at early stage companies in Chicago speak to what number of stock options you received when joining a company and what’s “fair” in this market? Company info: Series A - Less than $10 mil raised to date. Valuation isn’t public as far as I can tell 30-40 employees - I’d be around the 40 mark I’ve got about 3-4 years of product management experience.
You seem a bit new to this given the phrasing of the question. It would be helpful for others to answer your question if you provide more context such as: how much funding / what stage, last rounds valuation, your experience, employee #, etc.
Definitely new to this. Updated the post with what I know.
What matters is the value of options not total number. A $10M series A is big. You should ask about pre-val, amount raised, # of issued and outstanding, and fully diluted. Would be great to see cap table but assuming you won’t get that. Think of it this way, series A investors typically want 20-25% ownership and sets aside 10-15% employee option pool. That means your ~40m company has ~4M in preferred to hire all its employees needed to make it to B. Depending on outstanding key hires, the company could have way less to offer employees. How bad do they want you? How good are you? Additionally, valuation of your options depends on strike and preferred. Long story short - it can vary quite a bit. I’d assume anywhere between $10k - $75k.