So would you trade your founder equity for a fixed salary? My guess is probably not.
Equity is an extremely important factor for many candidates, especially more senior ones and executives.
I would not pitch it as future value, and instead pitch as % of company. If it's a minuscule amount that doesn't move the needle in offer conversations, than perhaps you are not offering enough, or you're identifying candidates who value more predictable income than investment in the company.
Exactly. If I'm joining a 30 person startup it's not because of the size of the paycheck. Any larger company will obvioulsy be able to easily beat the offer. I want a significant amount of equity. I want to see the cap table. I want to see details about funding rounds, finances, available runway. I want to see MRR/ARR, recently closed deals. If founders dance around these questions and say "equity is not imporant, see how much we are paying you" then I'm walking out the door.
Reading through the thread, the point is the startups arn't providing transparent accounts of what the equity is and how it can be diluted and reduced over the life time and sale of the company. That's all the debate.
Many people have seen those options become worthless because of legalistic maneuvers and violate what's said in the initial options.
So this tangent isn't really clarifying anything. Some people would simply want larger salaries and options be valued as 0$ for evaluating compensation because how easy Capitalists have made it to screw over classes of options/share holders.
Nothing wrong with wanting a guaranteed salary and job stability, but people in this situation should simply not be working at a VC funded tech startup. “Boring” software companies exist. Banks, government, aerospace, manufacturing, consulting Countless mid-large software companies of all conceivable types. Practically all of them will be able to beat a tiny startup on salary. Go work at them instead.
The question is more so to startups looking for proper staff. I'm not really certain you're getting the best quality staff if your best offer is to pimp up options. Seems like only morons would take that, and well, isn't that a problem itself?
the founder has so much more control over the direction of the company and what an exit looks like that it makes sense for them to want equity.
As an IC, there’s little I can do to affect the company valuation because I’m just executing the CEOs vision. And there’s nothing I can do to affect their decisions about potential exits.
Yes I would trade founder equity for an increased fixed salary. Statistically, equity is going to be worthless.