Small startup comp advice?

Oct 8, 2021 12 Comments

- Small fintech startup

- Has series b funding of $25M

- The founder is an engineer/developer and very smart

- Looking to invade the nerd wallet world

- Wants me to give range on TC w bonus and equity

- This is ***NOT*** a technical role

- this would be the “head of” position

I am thinking 175k base w 1% equity and 15% bonus

What do you think?

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TOP 12 Comments
  • New
    checkm8♟

    New

    checkm8♟
    You’re asking for 1% equity for a series B? Good luck with that
    Oct 8, 2021 7
  • Google
    sPer32

    Go to company page Google

    sPer32
    Equity for a new grad swe expressed as a percent should be around 10/2n where n is the number of employees (10/3n might be a good starting point for the offer from the company's perspective). This allows reasonable cap room, and reasonable space for senior hires.

    Then increase the equity by 25% for every "level". Bump up one additional level if your experience is very relevant to the domain (ex: it's an online trading company and you have 6 years of experience building trading systems).

    So at a 25 person company, a senior engineer should get somewhere around 10/(2*25)*1.25*1.25 = .3%. For the hypothetical trading systems engineer above, I would say more like 0.4%.
    From there you can negotiate a little more.

    Until around 1000 people, the levels a startup should consider are:
    1. New grad (l3 at Google/fb)
    2. 2-5 years (L4)
    3. 5-8 years (l5) - could be an entry level manager as well
    4 staff / senior manager (L6)
    5. Principal / Director of engineering at a startup (L7)
    6. Chief architect / VP of Eng (L7+)

    The above stops being true for late stage; at that point it's just dollar value of the RSUs.

    For non-swe, but PM, bump down one level (divide by 1.25). For marketing, finance etc .. bump down another level.
    Oct 8, 2021 1
  • New
    checkm8♟

    New

    checkm8♟
    If we were to consider 1%, would be have to be certain besides the position, you can contribute in x, y, z with evidence that you have experience with x, y, z.

    Ex. Head of Product for 1%, the hire would have to be very competent with the role requirements but has relevant industry connections that could help start up do x, knows bunch of investors, friends with someone in the NBA would be interested to angel invest.

    Just an example. Depends on the founders
    Oct 8, 2021 1