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I've been in this position. .5% of a rocketship is still pretty great. You'll end up with 1.25MM cash if the company exits at a billion (after 2x dilution and 5

by SeoxyS 12y ago

I've been in this position. .5% of a rocketship is still pretty great. You'll end up with 1.25MM cash if the company exits at a billion (after 2x dilution and 50% taxes if you're in California). Yeah, it sucks to think about how much richer the founders got, whilst you worked just as hard… but it's still important to remember that you were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and be along for the ride. Also, I bet you learnt a fuckton in this position which'll make it easy for you to accelerate your career. For me, seeing the hyper-growth from inside, taking on responsibility as the company grew, handling the shit as it hit the fan… that's priceless experience. Combine that + the 5MM I'll probably make out of it, and it doesn't matter how much better off the founders are, I still got a great outcome.

23david 12y ago
Sounds like you'll make out ok, but feel it could've worked out better... After proving your value as an early engineering hire, what about approaching the Founders to re-up the equity on a regular basis? Awesome first quarter 2012? Company revenue up 100x? Profit through the roof? Ok... how about that equity re-up? :-) Nothing should restrict irreplaceable engineers or engineers who just create tons of $$$ value from getting increased equity post-hire. I'm sure there are some great techniques for this, and this can definitely become a norm in our industry. (My friends on Wall Street have this down to an art form...) As companies grow out, individual engineer performance is usually under-appreciated so there is less leverage. I'm surprised you didn't walk away with co-founder (10%+) level equity. You built nearly everything... all the hard/nasty bits like supporting multiple api versions across diff platforms and also building/maintaining new features that drove new customer adoption. From an engineering perspective it was pretty awesome to see the value creation, so it's a bummer to hear that after sticking it out you won't get rewarded for that early value creation. Definitely think it'd be appropriate to show up one day after acquisition and ask for a rather large boat. Or 2. :-)

by SeoxyS 12y ago

23david 12y ago

Sounds like you'll make out ok, but feel it could've worked out better... After proving your value as an early engineering hire, what about approaching the Founders to re-up the equity on a regular basis? Awesome first quarter 2012? Company revenue up 100x? Profit through the roof? Ok... how about that equity re-up? :-) Nothing should restrict irreplaceable engineers or engineers who just create tons of $$$ value from getting increased equity post-hire. I'm sure there are some great techniques for this, and this can definitely become a norm in our industry. (My friends on Wall Street have this down to an art form...) As companies grow out, individual engineer performance is usually under-appreciated so there is less leverage. I'm surprised you didn't walk away with co-founder (10%+) level equity. You built nearly everything... all the hard/nasty bits like supporting multiple api versions across diff platforms and also building/maintaining new features that drove new customer adoption. From an engineering perspective it was pretty awesome to see the value creation, so it's a bummer to hear that after sticking it out you won't get rewarded for that early value creation. Definitely think it'd be appropriate to show up one day after acquisition and ask for a rather large boat. Or 2. :-)