Series D over FAANG ever worth it?
Purely from a financial perspective, I've seen a lot of posts here saying FAANG over startups because of higher TC vs paper money. For people who joined startups at series D (airbnb etc), did you end up making more than if you would've just joined FAANG for the same amount of time? Or is series D too late you make any significant money?
D and E are the best risk adjusted bets
Depends… we talking a “startup” like Stripe? (I definitely draw the line at series H)
Can you explain what’s wrong with Series H? Just trying to learn
There might be perceived notion that if they reached that many funding rounds without an IPO, that they are cash starved and not likely to IPO.
do you not understand the labor market?
It’s all luck. You can 3x at FAANG if you’re lucky and join at the right time. You can also .5x at a series D startup or 50x. But valuation does not equal a 1:1 payout for you. For example, going from 1B to 20B does not mean a 20x necessarily, there can be tons of dilution to your equity and there are different types of equity too. If I could do my whole life over again I would have just stayed at Google and made 10 million dollars by now
That's a really good point
In the last few months many startups had a lot of layoffs. Ethos is a series D startup. It hired for growth over the last year. But then laid off a lot of people over the last few months after the growth didn't quite pan out. Ethos didn't give a F about personal situations. Some employees came from FANG companies, after working there for many years. But got laid off laid within less than a year at Ethos, before they vested any stock.
Money is unpredictable sometimes, there are ups and downs. But I did get higher titles, leadership opportunities and cool product building experience which transitioned to money about 7-8 years later. Focus on experience and skills, you will eventually get money. If you focus on money first, you might lose your soul and lose money eventually.
Love this answer
That's a great way to look at it
We'll see!
Funding rounds were so insane back in 2020/2021 that it's probably a bad bet to join anything beyond series B right now. I interviewed at a series C startup with $7m in revenue and was valued at $2b lol There's 100% going to be a counter example that will prove my statement wrong, but these are unprecedented times.
great point
My spouse was laid off from his Series D, that has had 3 layoffs in 2 years. The company is 10 years old with no exit in sight so his exercised options are worthless. If you are a risk taker go for it, otherwise steady growth at a FAANG will get you to the finish line.
Let's see. Databricks valuation was less than 1B at series D. So probably at least a 20x for people who joined then. The answer is: in some rare cases it works out quite well
Do you think the TC they get at series D would be comparable to Big Tech? Or would it be less because of the potential?
Company is still valued at 30b? When whole market is down?