I recently got an offer for equity from a data science startup that has yet to go public, Sensor Tower. They provided an estimate for the equity's value, ranging from 25k-150k/year, but I don't know whether to trust their estimate or pull it into my evaluation of the offer at all. How does one evaluate stock offers fairly from companies that haven't gone public yet? YOE: 2 TC: 105k
What’s the base?
120k/year, full remote
I’ve worked with Sensor Tower as a partner for a few years and there’s some really sketchy aspects of how they collect user data so I’d weigh that into how you evaluate the equity & future of an IPO. They’ve also been losing clients the past couple years so not sure how healthy the business is…
With your YOE, 120k is good. Don’t go with blind standards. But I would look at the company profile, business model and alumni
You count it as $0. Genuinely. If it ends up valuable it’s a cherry on top but don’t take a dime less than market value in actual salary/ bonus/ etc until they go public and you can more easily actually calculate it into comp. Prior to 🍎 I was at a startup for many years that fortunately did finally go public but it took much longer than anticipated and was much more stressful than you’d think. Which is all to say get your pay in actual $$.
That makes sense! It's pretty much impossible to evaluate when a company is planning on going public if they haven't announced anything about it too, as far as I can tell, so you're probably right :(