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There is no normal honestly. Experience counts a lot and IMO the amount raised does as well along with your equity stake. Not knowing how much experience you

There is no normal honestly. Experience counts a lot and IMO the amount raised does as well along with your equity stake. Not knowing how much experience you have it is hard to say. You could be fair now or low or frankly high. Obviously for where you live I doubt you are overpaid. I will say this I don't think based on the very limited data that you are paid poorly for an early stage company. If you want to shoot me a personal email with more details (or post here) happy to give you a more detailed opinion. I myself am the CTO for a company that has raised and have been a founder myself a few times so I feel I am a fairly good judge on this stuff most of the time. BTW. There is nothing wrong with asking for a little more as the company hits certain milestones. Just be fair and honest.

RightBack 8y ago
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the honesty. I have added my experience to my post now. Some more info: We raised a ~$1m seed recently at a $6m post valuation. As I mentioned in my edit, I have ~3 years experience building web apps for startups and have definitely the experience, knowledge and responsibility of a mid-level engineer at a larger tech firm. I do really like working with our team and our product is solid, we're at the stage where the business will either thrive or die in the next 6-12 months.
- davismwfl 8y ago
  Given all that, you are not being taken advantage of, although I could argue the equity to salary ratio is off, so either a little more salary or more equity. However, with only a $1M raise there isn't a lot of room to give you more salary, and I've seen really small employee equity pools in startups in the past few years so there may not be much there either. If the company had raised $3-5m then yea it isn't rare to see a CTO type in the mid to higher 100's, but then that person usually will have quite a bit more experience than you do. This isn't a knock against you in any way, this is just the realities of startups and business. While it is always fine to ask for a little more when certain events happen, like fundings, I don't think there is much room here for you to get any change. Although you might be able to negotiate $5-10k. You could angle for a bonus at a big milestone in the next 6-9 months, where 5-10k could be negotiated as a one-time bonus if you do well. That's easier on the business because it isn't an on-going operational cost and it can be justified by you doing something that really benefitted the business. Mind you it has to be more than you already promised or why would anyone agree to it. If you want/need to be in the six figures (we all have reasons for what we need/do), find a job at a larger company/startup, no faulting you in that if you have a need/want.
  - RightBack 8y ago
    I can see the approach of negotiating a bonus structure working. I posted the question to get closer to the truth, not boost my ego so I'm thankful for you calling it as it is.

RightBack 8y ago

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the honesty. I have added my experience to my post now. Some more info: We raised a ~$1m seed recently at a $6m post valuation. As I mentioned in my edit, I have ~3 years experience building web apps for startups and have definitely the experience, knowledge and responsibility of a mid-level engineer at a larger tech firm. I do really like working with our team and our product is solid, we're at the stage where the business will either thrive or die in the next 6-12 months.

davismwfl 8y ago
Given all that, you are not being taken advantage of, although I could argue the equity to salary ratio is off, so either a little more salary or more equity. However, with only a $1M raise there isn't a lot of room to give you more salary, and I've seen really small employee equity pools in startups in the past few years so there may not be much there either. If the company had raised $3-5m then yea it isn't rare to see a CTO type in the mid to higher 100's, but then that person usually will have quite a bit more experience than you do. This isn't a knock against you in any way, this is just the realities of startups and business. While it is always fine to ask for a little more when certain events happen, like fundings, I don't think there is much room here for you to get any change. Although you might be able to negotiate $5-10k. You could angle for a bonus at a big milestone in the next 6-9 months, where 5-10k could be negotiated as a one-time bonus if you do well. That's easier on the business because it isn't an on-going operational cost and it can be justified by you doing something that really benefitted the business. Mind you it has to be more than you already promised or why would anyone agree to it. If you want/need to be in the six figures (we all have reasons for what we need/do), find a job at a larger company/startup, no faulting you in that if you have a need/want.
- RightBack 8y ago
  I can see the approach of negotiating a bonus structure working. I posted the question to get closer to the truth, not boost my ego so I'm thankful for you calling it as it is.