Need advice - joining early stage startup
Team - planning to join an early stage startup at Mgmt position. What should be the equity offer should b ? .5%-1% . Also do you think it’s a good time in digital identity space to try ?
How are these people even getting offers? You don't disclose the company's cap or valuation and give % out? 1% of 1M is very different from 1% of 100M
Why are you so annoyed? Relax you don’t have to feel compelled to answer .. on a side note , I understand I should have given more context so giving below. I just wanted to check what’s the standard norm at different levels.. it’s ok if you don’t know
Needs more details: What was the last funding round? Seed or Series A? What is the current team size? What is the position you're expected to fill? How much experience do you have? How desperate do they want you? Do you have any special skillsets that are not readily available?
Sure , last funding round - seed (4.5 million ) Current team size 12, position is engineering mgr , total experience around 12 years, they are very desperate, special skills building security products and strong products skills.
You will likely be given a range with base salary and options. If you get a typical senior engineer salary, it would be in range of 150-180k and 0.5 to 0.75% equity.
Identity, you are in big boy space now. Google, FB, Microsoft have all got identity wrapped up now. What is this startup’s big differentiator? What’s the plan to monetize? Half percent or whole percent of zero is zero bub
Yes it’s the same space as Okta, bigID and similar others
Is the founder Stanford MBA grad?
Heh. I know which one
Yes
Now everyone knows 😣 no privacy in the internet
Wow, 4.5m is considered seed these days. Expect a lot of dilution as company raises more rounds. Also high probability that your shares will be worth 0 even if the startup is acquired as the common can be wiped out while the founders get sweet equity packages with the acquiring company (speak from bitter experience as a very very early hire at a company that raised ~30m and was acquired. Founders made multi millions, everyone else not so lucky)
I doubt you can get 1% . Even 0.5%
What if I can negotiate to .5?
You can calculate the return yourself. I used to have an offer with 1% as first hire. Valuation 7m post money. Founder expect to exit around 100M to 200M. Usually it takes 3 to 4 rounds. I will make less than a million with dilution. Tbh, it doesn’t worth it
Hmm, so there are no standards , got that.
Financially speaking, it's not worth it very most likely. Speaking from experience as someone which joined early series A startup which was acquired later. Startup experience has other benefits though.
*advice
Ha ha thanks for the correction :-)
*haha 😁