Ask HN: Reasonable equity for early employees?

65 points

15 years ago

Hi. I've read quite a bit about this (ones that helped me a lot were pg's Equity Equation, http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html, and Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees, http://www.instigatorblog.com/equity-early-startup-employees/2009/09/11/).

The deal is: I've recently received a New York's startup offer to join as one of the first employees. The startup just got its series A round, and is already profitable (a bit more than ramen), which diminishes greatly the risks. The equity offered me (1% total) strongly reflects this. Taking the equity equation formula (considering the salary, which is a bit above market), if they didn't want any profit on my contributions, they are expecting me to increase the companies worth by 2,3% (conversely, if they are taking 900% profit, they expect me to increase the company's worth by 23%).

The second article I've mentioned quotes a table from Venture Hacks which may suggest this is a standard. The blog author rambles the table gives not enough equity.

Considering I'll be the first full engineer on the team (which had mostly interns and the founders which are kinda junior programmers, with a board member representing VC and helping with the boring part of the business legalities), is this deal any good?

19 comments