pick
You should get a lower offer and pick that one.
That equity will likely be $0. Cash comp seems generous for a startup.
I’m not familiar with equity in general. Why will it be $0? Can they sell on a secondary market?
Startups mostly fail, or OP will leave before it vests, or if it is worth something it won’t be liquid for 10 years.
Higher tc
Depends on what you need urgently. If you already have family and need to drum up money for retirement, go for higher TC. If you want startup exposure and never had one before, go for startup. This is assuming technologies used are same and you expect to do the same type of work in both places. Another point is if you want faster career growth (not faster TC scale-up), startup would be best bet. If you want stability, Apple would be best bet.
This is the right advice. People’s opinion doesn’t matter because the decision depends on your goals. One way to think about startup is it’s like going back to grad/business school, that is, you sacrifice making money in the short term for personal growth through lots of ownership and problem solving which can yield higher returns in the future.
Stay
The startup equity has a potential of being much larger than any Apple equity. However, it also has a much higher potential of going to $0. It’s about risk, not TC here. If the company goes to $1B, you’ll look like an idiot for not going with the startup. But you’ll look even more like an idiot if it goes bankrupt. How much intuition do you have about the startup being a great idea/company long term?
Which org and role at Apple?
🤡
Why would you wanna lower your TC?
So they can face some challenges in life and grind harder to overcome them. Getting higher TC would be too easy.