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If you're in a company that's series B+, a $180M liquidation event is a fail, and you shouldn't expect to make anything. I'm not counting angel rounds as a ser

by timr 12y ago

If you're in a company that's series B+, a $180M liquidation event is a fail, and you shouldn't expect to make anything. I'm not counting angel rounds as a series A here. I'm talking about the big rounds that are invested to scale the business of an already-successful product. Companies that take these kinds of rounds can still fail, but the rate is nowhere near the same as for an early stage startup. And there's still upside in it for the employees: if you get .01% at a $100M series B valuation, and the company eventually IPOs for $1B, you've walked away with a grant worth $100,000. We're only a factor of ~4 apart -- make that .02% and a $2B exit (or .01% at 50M for a $2B exit, or...), and you're basically there. And we haven't even talked about raises and/or retention grants, yet. So perhaps "certainly" was a strong choice of words, but it isn't totally ridiculous, either. Being a later stage employee at a hot company is a pretty good deal.

jsaxton86 12y ago
Yeah, I think we're pretty much on the same page. I think we both agree that established startups probably provide the best balance between risk and reward, but I'm less optimistic about the potential reward, especially for an engineer. I joined the company I currently work for about a year after they raised a series C round. Most importantly, I get a pretty competitive base salary, but I also have some stock options. Even in the best case scenarios I think I'm looking at new car money, not mid-six figures. From talking with other coworkers, joining shortly after the series B round would have increased my options by roughly a factor of 3, in which case that "new car money" becomes "down payment on a house" money. Which is great, I'm not complaining at all, but it's not enough such that anyone post-series B that I know will be making a few hundred thousand per year.

by timr 12y ago

jsaxton86 12y ago

Yeah, I think we're pretty much on the same page. I think we both agree that established startups probably provide the best balance between risk and reward, but I'm less optimistic about the potential reward, especially for an engineer. I joined the company I currently work for about a year after they raised a series C round. Most importantly, I get a pretty competitive base salary, but I also have some stock options. Even in the best case scenarios I think I'm looking at new car money, not mid-six figures. From talking with other coworkers, joining shortly after the series B round would have increased my options by roughly a factor of 3, in which case that "new car money" becomes "down payment on a house" money. Which is great, I'm not complaining at all, but it's not enough such that anyone post-series B that I know will be making a few hundred thousand per year.