Am I getting a good deal?
I recently started working for a tech startup in SF. I'm a smart engineer who chose not to work for google and facebook. Also i went to an ivy-league school (though this shouldn't make a difference) and graduated last year. The startup has been around for about 2 months and has raised some decent money, + has a ton of frothy investor interest. There are 5 employees - 3 are founders making me employee #2. I've built about 40% of the existing alpha product. There are 2 other engineers.
I'm getting 75k and half a point of equity. There's a 4 year vesting scheme. Am I getting a good deal?
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What will the company lose if you walk? That is what your equity should be based on. Given your brief bio, it would seem as though you can offer a lot to the company.
What contribution are you making to the product - aside from doing 40% of the work, are you contributing to design/product decisions, novel ways to implement the features? Is there any IP onto which your name would be should it be granted a patent?
What other options do you have with respect to other opportunities?
Of course many people here will immediately judge everything by dollar amount alone, but by that logic no one should work for NASA, which has crappy pay.
The equity isn't ridiculously low, but it's not high either. You should probably push for more if you can.
At the end of the day though the guy across the street with 5% of a crappy startup isn't getting a better deal than you if your company rocks.
The one thing I would say is this, if you don't ask you definitely wont get more. I don't think any of us can truly judge if it is a good deal because we dont have enough information.
75K * 4 years = 300K
If you work somewhere else (Goog, FB, ...) for 4 years, would you learn more, make more money, be more content?
4 years is a looong time, they really locked you in there.