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Ask HN: How to determine your value to a startup

1 points by rythmshifter ↗ HN
I was recently recruited to write a web crawler that will become the heart of a piece of software created by a new startup. They are talking about offering me 5-10% stake in the new company. I felt this was somewhat low, considering there's only 2-3 dedicated programmers and only 4 people involved in the founding of this startup. How can I determine and demonstrate to my new overlords (one of them is a longtime close friend) that I am worth more tahn 5-10% before we get started working?

2 comments

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arisAlexis
my humble opinion is that sounds like a fair deal. there are 7 people and the founders always deserve a bit more due to the idea concept and effort to make it work. In the end you are going to develop something so you need to think in terms of how much money you will get calculating the probability to get much more than what you would in a normal job. If there is a 10% chance that you 10x the money you would get normally that's a fair deal. If you think this can go big then maybe there is a 10% chance you 100x the normal wage. This is a good arbitrage. Don't get greedy because "10% sounds little". If you think this project is not going to generate much and you don't believe in its potential just say no.
[dead] sumitviii
I think you can hardly push it more than 10. They are recruited before you. That gives them a say, which you don't get.