Leave or Stay at a Startup?
I left Google 7 months back to join a startup. People are nice and work is fine but everyone is drinking too much of kool-aid here and pretty much no real progress has happened since I joined on the product. For the past 2 months I have been thinking of returning to Google. My husband is fine with either decision and I don't have a financial/immigration urgency to decide. Should I stay for the 1-year cliff and get 25% or should I leave? I do have the FOMO of missing out on the equity if things do turn around. I am pretty confident that this won't happen in the next 6-12 months. Salary: 390K at Google Salary: 190K at startup + 2% equity over 4 years with 1 year cliff
How would random strangers on a forum be able to make a better decision for you than you would? There are a lot of variables here, we don’t know the full story from the limited information you’ve given us and hence any suggestion made wouldn’t be complete.
I am looking for some advice on how to go about thinking about this. Any mental models around this will be great
I think you can return to Google and keep the same com and level without reinterviewing. You may want to check the process if you wait. Assuming you are getting options from startup, you would also need to account for cost to exercise.
I mean within 1 yr
Cost to exercise has already been paid for via early exercise :/
I've been at startups and I think financially they're easily worse. You need to multiply your equity with the odds of actually liquidating them, and the expected value is peanuts. I'd only work at one if I'm sometime really into working on cool things and fine with a pay cut.
We are working on a good idea. Team is great. However, the product market fit is missing and everyone says that it will arrive as soon as we as this feature or that feature. This makes the work more of an academic exercise than a real product.
I think you have to understand your own priority. How do you evaluate trade-off between money, impact, team size, and other things? The fact that you left Google means you are willing to tradeoff current tc for other things you didn't get at g. You may have new information now that may make you revisit.
The new information is the kool-aid people are drinking here. Teams at Google are less bullish about their future than kids here.
I've seen this at start ups way too much. From what you've described they won't have breakout success any time soon. The opportunity cost of forgoing your TC at Google is too high. I would return.
Stay till 1yr to get the 25%, unless you cannot go back to Google after the 1yr. If the startup is funded well and @series B or later, they probably have some market opportunity ( VCs are pretty smart, at least the good ones). And many times all it takes a good market opportunity and reasonable product to succeed. Startup is much different than Google and it is worth learning about them. It is also harder to be part of startup core team, so make sure you are talking to right people in the startup
Thanks. I am talking to the right people. We just had 40M in funding. We didn't have a product market fit and we still don't have it. The money seems to be creating a "we have arrived" setting in the office. My fear we will end up like Path or Fab.com Everyone is extremely positive and when I raised the issues in 1:1, the CEO said that I am too critical.
Past series B, the quarter-to-quarter growth matters. Also look at which VC is funding the last round ( every round should have a new VC added, hopefully a tier 1 VC). All CEO talk that everything is rosy and things will turn great ( it’s their job to talk), but quarter growth numbers gives the real picture. Finance side : I am assuming you joined after the 40mil funding and the stock buy price is not insignificant anymore ( for vesting 25%). Startups don’t give as good financial return as Google would , unless you are a founder or in founding team ( or if the company goes IPO or gets sold early). The pre-exercise does allow you to be taxed at long term capital gains and not as regular income ( for Fed, but not CA state)
Yoe? Look out for other opportunities and when that present itself, you can make a better decision
Suggestion: change your user name. It's not compatible with blind guidelines :p
Speak for yourself Tim Etogon W.