I did some research on salary/equity grants last year and published a blog post on the subject. The dataset was most Silicon Valley job postings on AngelList (a

I did some research on salary/equity grants last year and published a blog post on the subject. The dataset was most Silicon Valley job postings on AngelList (at that time). Based on my data, $60k salary is very much on the low end (i.e. 10th percentile of salaries). .5-1% equity may or may not be low-end -- it definitely depends on company size. That said, you will almost never see >1% equity once you get past the first few hires (except for VP roles). Post link: http://codingvc.com/analyzing-angellist-job-postings-part-2-salary-and-equity-benchmarks http://codingvc.com/analyzing-angellist-job-postings-part-2-... Edit: You are right that compensation is generally lower than for non-startups. To be fair, a lot of people look beyond compensation when pursuing startup jobs. They're looking for more ownership, less bureaucracy, a chance to learn, a chance to form very deep personal and professional relationships, and so on. And of course, there is the equity lottery ticket (which usually doesn't end up being worth very much..)