
Ask HN: First Engineer at Seed-Stage Startup – Salary, Stock Options Advice? - powergear
My company have raised a $2M seed round and been valued at 10M$. There are 2 founders and 4 employees, including 2 devs (I&#x27;m one of the devs). I&#x27;m Senior Engineer with 4 years experience, working in the company for 2 years (since start of the company). I believe they wouldn&#x27;t raise the round without my hard work.<p>I am wondering what a fair salary I should be getting and how many % should I ask for stock options. Thanks in advance HN!
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amirathi
I'd say market salary + as much equity as you can negotiate between 0.4 to 4%.

Disclaimer: I prefer to be pessimistic about startup equity for employees.
It's like buying a lottery ticket where folks running it dictate the odds &
have legal mechanisms in place to change the prize money at the very end.

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karanbhangui
If you've been there since the start of the company, I'd consider you a
founder. I think the whole 0.1-1% order of magnitude equity is a massively raw
deal for first employees. I think we need to stop thinking of founders and
more about founding teams.

Out of curiosity, what salary and equity did you have for the first two years?

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powergear
Yes, I meant first employee, not founder. $3K/month, no equity.

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karanbhangui
If you've been at the company since the beginning and only took $36k/year
(assuming in the US) with no equity and contributed lead engineering input,
I'd consider you as part of the "founding team", if not a founder.

I'm aware that founders are generally those on the incorporation docs and
everyone else is considered an employee in startup parlance, but I think first
employees (especially as described in your case) take proportionally the same
risk as the legal founders but get order or two magnitude less upside. It's a
totally raw deal. Without knowing more, I'd be looking for 10%+ of _founder-
class_ shares if I were you.

Feel free to contact me (see my bio for contact info) if you'd like to discuss
more privately. I'm going to be writing up something about this as well. I've
seen first employees getting raw deals for years and it's always rubbed me the
wrong way, especially as a founder and former "first employee".

edit: I want to point out that I'm aware equity, like many other things in
business, is always about what you can negotiate. Post the seed round raise,
your negotiating position is weaker than at the beginning, but my thoughts
above are about what's "fair". What's fair and what's negotiable are often
very different.

patio11 has a great take in the top comment here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2949323)

