I'm looking to interview for a Group Product Manager role at a Series-B startup, that raised $75M in their last Series-B round. This will be my first role at a startup and a bit clueless about how to think about base salary and equity? I have about 7 years of Product Management experience from Product lead companies. #salary #startup #careers #interview #compensation
Best way to think about equity is not to think about it. It's unlikely that you'll see any real money from equity. Keep base high and get the startup experience. It's an amazing experience that doesn't pay well but prepares you for your next move.
What's your recommendation to combat the typical statements like, "Our compensation focuses on heavier on equity and lower on BASE pay"?
Don't listen to people, get equity too. Last thing you want is the startup actually going public and you missing out.
Any resources that you would suggest to figure out what's the right percentage of equity to seek?
Wrote about this a bit here: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Startup-founders-in-SF-why-should-first-employee-join-you-ZtfRtSUf There are ~2 ways you can make equity liquid: startup gets sold, or IPO. IPO is better, let's talk about that: Generally, the high-order-bits are: startup IPOs currently track over 10-ish years; and whether your options expire if you leave the corp (vast majority still do, check your contract, and negotiate this the fuck out) If your options don't expire, a simple expected-value model is: ( P(exit event happens | given series B) X last category-typical company's exit price X ownership percentage at issuing X dilution factor ) / (number of years left until IPO) ) Typical values: Stripe hit series B in '12, still no IPO => assume >8 years; 20% chance to exit, for $1B, for series-B equity assuming a generous 0.1%, diluting to 0.05% at exit. This nets you a total of $12,500 per year. If your options expire, multiply the above with probability of you sticking around for the remaining N years + lock-up period. If your corp gets sold, typically employee equity gets re-vested into acquirer corp's equity at an arbitrary rate (if at all). This is high-variance, and depends on how expandable you are to the new motherboard. Secondary markets _might_ reduce time-to-liquidity, but only by ~1-2 years, and at significant discount. Basically, while Sam Altman is right that real wealth is only created by equity, pre-IPO the employee track does not currently exposes you to that at any significant levels. Round it down to zero.
Thank you so much for taking the time to give a thoughtful reply. You've given some important things to think about, mainly, how to ensure that options don't expire...
This. Even the rank and file Plaid folks who got a multi-billion dollar exit by Visa at a top startup walk away maybe with a half million if they’re lucky. Too many employees and not enough value created. The odds your company is Plaid is next to nothing.
Wondering how you landed on this OP. Going through a similar situation now, although still early stages
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Take offer from Apple or stay at current role
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Avoid teams with only Chinese or Indians especially with a Chinese/Indian manager
Consider salary only and treat equity as worthless paper