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Lack of execution in your tech roadmap can sink your startup. However, effective execution by your engineering team does not guarantee success. The thing that l
by jkingsbery 4y ago
Lack of execution in your tech roadmap can sink your startup. However, effective execution by your engineering team does not guarantee success. The thing that leads to success is product-market fit and growing revenue. Tech can be a barrier preventing revenue, but the thing that determines revenue is product (does your thing solve a problem?) and marketing (can you make other people aware of your thing?). But there aren't a lot of product-minded engineers out there: most engineers get excited about scaling databases rather than marketing funnels. So the tradeoffs aren't symmetrical: a bad engineer hire hurts than a good engineer hire helps.
In any case, 5% is a lot for any salaried employee. It's been a few years since I've been at a startup, but employee share pools used to be 15% or 20% - you wouldn't give a third or a quarter of your pool to one person.
- lumost 4y agoFair, however I'd generally expect that you are more likely to find engineers who care about your product if you give more equity. In times past, great engineers moved to startups to satisfy their ambition. Now big-tech is giving out liquid compensation that is 2-3x more valuable than a startup compensation package at exit. All else being equal, a large well funded corporation is more likely to find product market fit than a small underfunded one.