
Ask HN: How much equity in early stage startup for a developer? - allfou
How much equity can I get from a startup of about 10 people including the founders? Let&#x27;s say I&#x27;d be developer #4 or #5. Other people aren&#x27;t developers and they already raised a few millions in seed founding.
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jasonkester
Zero.

At least, it's best to go in knowing that that's what it is going to be worth
in the end, so that you'll be able to negotiate correctly.

They'll probably quote you a percentage and spin a story that ends with you
walking away with a cool quarter million when they exit (assuming their
optimistic math works out as expected). That's good, because you know that new
startups fail outright roughly 90% of the time, and never pay meaningful
equity returns the remaining 10% (with the actual exits that are good for
employees living in the rounding error of that last number).

But now you have something with a stated value that you can negotiate away in
exchange for additional consideration on top of the market rate they'll need
to bring you in. I personally used to prefer trading my options for extra paid
vacation.

If they suddenly decide that those options aren't actually worth all that
money after all, now that you've decided to trade them away, you can start
talking about that 90%/10%/0% outcome breakout above and bring in terms like
"hazard pay" to offset the near certainty that you'll be back on the job
market in eleven months time.

This may affect their impression of whether you're going to be a "team player"
who "shares their vision". Which is fine. You're trading your time for money.
If they don't want to do that with you, they can keep looking and hopefully
find that idealistic kid they're looking for who can't do simple math in the
presence of a happy narrative.

Good luck!

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iurisilvio
I totally agree with this response, but as first tech employee you have good
leverage. Possibly only you know what's happening and the cost to change is
high. You can try to negotiate equity to a CTO position instead of first
developer.

If they have more tech employees, you lose this leverage.

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minimaxir
On Tuesday, I published an interactive chart of Salaries/Equity offered to
prospective job applicants in the Bay Area on AngelList:
[http://minimaxir.com/2016/05/sfba-
compensation/](http://minimaxir.com/2016/05/sfba-compensation/)

Since AngelList favors early-stage startups, that will give you a good
starting point on equity amounts. (tl;dr: do not expect much)

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smt88
Whatever you get, make sure you get paid a fair salary. Equity is cool, but
you should pretend it's worth nothing at this stage (it likely never will be
worth anything).

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mkhpalm
Totally undervalued advice these days. You can't eat equity.

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jstnjosepht
Sam mentioned in How to Start a Startup that he advises giving 10% of the
company to the first ten employees. Assuming even distribution, I've been
curious myself to know if the founding team lacks technical co-founders, would
the first engineering hire be worth more equity?

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zer00eyz
Its not about how much you get, its about what the shares represent.

Do you know what a CAP table is? Can you read one? Good your 1/2 way there. If
they are brining you on at this point and balk at showing you a CAP table, run
the other way.

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alain94040
This is a market, so check out similar offers. You'll find plenty on AngelList
which will give you a pretty clear idea of where the market is right now in
terms of equity for early employees.

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jpeg_hero
1%

