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It is surely delusional but the founders tell themselves they are going to exit for 1B. So the chump options you would get for 1% worth is still going to net yo

It is surely delusional but the founders tell themselves they are going to exit for 1B. So the chump options you would get for 1% worth is still going to net you 10M, which would be quite nice. Obviously, they are going to have to take more money and you are going to be diluted to nothing and you'll be lucky if the whole company exits for 10M. Equity seems only to have value as golden handcuffs, keeping early valuable employees at the company since they lose everything if they leave and can't afford to exercise 400K of options plus face the tax implications.

pja 9y ago
1%? We used to dream of 1% (cue the Four Yorkshiremen). One startup I know of offered 0.1% to a potential employee No 2. I don’t think they took the offer.
- icedchai 9y ago
  It's laughable how low many options grants are for early engineers, given the risk and the required contribution. The first few technical employees have to do a disproportionate amount of work. This is especially true when the company consists of all non-technical founders.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    I kept reading down this chain intending to reply but every reply added something relevant to my comment. I was once asked to join a company as employee number 13, and I would have been the first technical person to join the company. They offered me a salary of zero dollars and one percent, and the founder of the company said in every meeting before he was willing to reveal the numbers -- the stupidest game on the planet -- that he truly understood the value of engineers and was going to be offering very generous pay packages. Haha I actually laughed at the guys on Skype -- funny how they also tried to gang up on me to turn the screws, as it were! -- when they told me the numbers because I thought they were joking, and they weren't. I don't want to reveal too much about the company because they would be easy to identify based on this, but they had this one weird trick they were trying with shares in order to win investors and generate media buzz, which was actually just hilarious and ridiculous. I will say that they were going to issue billions (with a "B") of shares to begin with. They were so convinced they were going to become the next Google. Surprisingly, their website is still up, but all of my contacts from that company are now listed as working elsewhere on LinkedIn. Shocking, I know.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  I was briefly engaged as an early technical employee number X (somewhere between 3-15 because later I discovered they apparently kept leaving) at a small startup (sans-funding) here. It was a bit of a mess. Offered 0.05% maturing in 4 years (or you take a substantial cut for maturation in one year), with no salary and vague promises of expenses covered, and unhinged scope creep that I'd only hear about while sitting next to the (non-technical) founder in a sales pitch. Needless to say, I didn't stay long.

pja 9y ago

1%? We used to dream of 1% (cue the Four Yorkshiremen). One startup I know of offered 0.1% to a potential employee No 2. I don’t think they took the offer.

icedchai 9y ago
It's laughable how low many options grants are for early engineers, given the risk and the required contribution. The first few technical employees have to do a disproportionate amount of work. This is especially true when the company consists of all non-technical founders.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  I kept reading down this chain intending to reply but every reply added something relevant to my comment. I was once asked to join a company as employee number 13, and I would have been the first technical person to join the company. They offered me a salary of zero dollars and one percent, and the founder of the company said in every meeting before he was willing to reveal the numbers -- the stupidest game on the planet -- that he truly understood the value of engineers and was going to be offering very generous pay packages. Haha I actually laughed at the guys on Skype -- funny how they also tried to gang up on me to turn the screws, as it were! -- when they told me the numbers because I thought they were joking, and they weren't. I don't want to reveal too much about the company because they would be easy to identify based on this, but they had this one weird trick they were trying with shares in order to win investors and generate media buzz, which was actually just hilarious and ridiculous. I will say that they were going to issue billions (with a "B") of shares to begin with. They were so convinced they were going to become the next Google. Surprisingly, their website is still up, but all of my contacts from that company are now listed as working elsewhere on LinkedIn. Shocking, I know.
52-6F-62 9y ago
I was briefly engaged as an early technical employee number X (somewhere between 3-15 because later I discovered they apparently kept leaving) at a small startup (sans-funding) here. It was a bit of a mess. Offered 0.05% maturing in 4 years (or you take a substantial cut for maturation in one year), with no salary and vague promises of expenses covered, and unhinged scope creep that I'd only hear about while sitting next to the (non-technical) founder in a sales pitch. Needless to say, I didn't stay long.