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Ask HN: Successful Non-Founders, was it worth it?

12 points by wdgtmkr ↗ HN
I've been asked if I would join a startup with as a non-founding, but critical hire. I've been offered a great amount of equity according to my research. I like the company a lot and think they're on to something. I can figure out most of the pros and cons of joining them, but don't have a sense of what it could be like assuming a really positive outcome. For those who ended up at really successful companies as non-founders, was it worth it? Were you happy with your equity when the company sold or had an IPO? Did the final outcome fall short of your expectations in any way?

Though the details are sparse, I used a throwaway to not upset the founders.

9 comments

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brudgers
At the risk of stating the obvious, equity gets diluted. A great amount at the start may be trivial after several funding rounds. You might run the numbers for high, low, and middle scenarios.

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/10/employee-equity-dilution.htm...

Good Luck.

wdgtmkr
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that post yet. Dilution is my main concern, so I'm curious how it ended up effecting others that made it through. The non-monetary gains would be excellent without question!
brudgers
From observation, FU money is unlikely. There is probably an inverse correlation between the likelihood of FU money and the likelihood of multiple funding rounds.
mattm
Watch the Facebook movie "The Social Network" for an example of this.
manpreets7
What you make will probably a lot less than the founders. But if the company is successful, that will still be quite a lot more than what you get from a regular salary working at a big company. And what you end up learning is also quite a lot more.

So, if you are not starting your company and if you believe in what the founders are doing, I would say go for it.

wdgtmkr
Thank you for the response. I also have an startup idea I'm excited about, but its chances of success are much more unknown than this existing startups. The founders are pretty well connected, so it seems I'd be learning a lot of things that I might not if I were the founder the first time around.
[dead] stiggz
I joined a startup as a non-founder about a year and a half ago, stayed for six months, and left before they sold. I had a great time there, (set the bar way too high for my follow-up job in retrospect). I'd say, go for it just for the experience with startups, it's a brand new world, and you definitely won't see things the same afterwards. Make sure you agree with the founder's vision so that you can do their critical work with some enthusiasm.
throwaway2342
Here's one data point from a $270M exit:

Joined post-series-A at 0.2%. These initial options eventually got diluted down to 0.05%. I did get "re-upped" with more options over the years, so when the company exited seven years later, my total was about 0.085%.

I ended up with an extra $227K for my efforts. This was on top of an above-market salary. Not too bad, but did fall short of my expectations.