My personal favorite early startup employee story is Doug Edward's "I'm Feeling Lucky", which documents his experience as Google employee #59 (stock options and all). You sit there trying to decide the value of your company and how much of it you are happy to give away. Companies often pay for this data from vendors, but its usually not available to candidates. They are exposed to a high-risk/high potential scenario, hence will likely want a decent slice of equity to get a meaningful return if things go well, and also to have a meaningful level of influence and control of key company decisions if they dont. Following up from my previous post on how startup equity actually works (and clickbaitingly titled Why you will never get rich from working in a startup), this post will put together some math around how much equity you should ask for when you are joining a startup. Equity, typically in the form of stock options, is the currency of the tech and startup worlds. This is worth breaking down in further detail. Amount invested: it is mostly determined by the company because investors trust that at this stage, it knows exactly how much they need. July 12th, 2022| By: Sarah Humphreys. This person was previously a CMO at a Fortune 500 company. This is obviously not true, and founders will be looking to make a profit on your hire. Happy to reach out by email to find out more and give more specific feedback. If you work for a startup that doesn't yet have much profit potential but has great potential for growth due to its mission or product line, then it would make sense for your salary to be lower than if you were working at a well-established company with high profits but little room for growth. Pre-funding it's usually much higher. This is the tougher one. This means that equity is now back in the options pool and the company can give new or existing employees equity. Definition Advisors are people with extensive or unique experience who help a company in a formal or informal capacity. We want to replace the 1218 month go big or go bust funding cycle into one where founders can raise capital at any time, to meet the companys needs. Seed-funded startups would offer higher equitysometimes much higher if there is little funding, but base salaries will be lower. Stanton walks us through the process of determining how dilution will affect the value of your shares over three rounds of investment. This particular post is a mixture of both experience and other sources. Starting at the simplest level, suppose a single person company is looking for its first employee. Pricing It's not easy for seed-funded companies to move on to a Series A funding round. As much as Dragons Den makes for great TV, here in the real world, equity investment doesnt work like that. I dont want to say its like a decaying exponential, but its something like that. The dream is alive: find a young, promising startup, put in four years of hard work, and end up a deca-millionaire. The real rule is never work for free. And top candidates are also asking for a lot more equity. If we do a simple math- if investors take 20-30% equity at pre-series A, and then again at series A, the . So to get the best mix, you have to be very real about the company's long-term growth potential, your role in achieving it, and the current liquidity necessary to run the operations. Remember to factor in a buffer for the unknown as anything can happen and usually does in startup land! Let's say you just raised your Series B funding. Buy it now for lifetime access to expert knowledge, including future updates. Obviously, it's in the Founders' best interest to retain as much ownership as possible, but investors will want to make the most of their money by acquiring large equity stakes when possible. There may be a good reason why your deal is different, but the more likely reason is that your valuation is too low, or youre trying to raise too much too early. Companies often pay for this data from. Lets tackle that now. It's almost impossible to tell what the next game changer will look like. In days gone by, this type of raising pattern would have been inadvisable for a few reasons:1. An engineer coming in at the mid-level can expect .45% versus .15% for a junior engineer. In this situation, you should be especially diligent in your analysis because you will realize that even the best-laid plans sometimes fall completely short. Focus: Valuation Range: 5% - 15%, average 10% . Other Resources, About us Investors often saw drip feeding investment as failure to raise a proper round. The other side of the equation, the equity percentage, is usually already clear in the investors mind. For that reason, at pre-seed and seed stage, it is not uncommon for . The number of deals reaching this stage is relatively little. This is the first talk about equity stake and valuation. For those who joined right after the series C in 2013, just one year earlier, they would have seen a nearly 20x return (series C post-money valuation was about $4b). By that point, she had founded or cofounded several venture-backed startups (shes up to five). Other C-level execs would receive 1-5% equity that vests over time (usually 4 years). Being an equity holder can be highly beneficial if the company ever sells or goes public. Equidam has helped many startups in their fundraising process and also we have done fundraising ourselves. Leo Polovets created a survey of AngelList job postings from 2014, an excellent summary of equity levels for the first few dozen hires at these early-stage startups. Another reason is when the company doesn't have salary money available but the potential is very strong. Whats the experience of the person coming over? Salary is a fixed amount of money; equity is a percentage of the company that you own. He needed to remain motivated to stick around for the long-run, Shukla explains, and we also knew through subsequent rounds of funding he would become diluted.. Ultimately, your company valuation is whatever you and your investors agree it is. Already a Tech Co-Founder. You measure how much new stock to give by how much ownership a certain position should have based on the life and timing of the company. Of those companies, 10 went on to reach Unicorn status, and 7 exited before raising a Series E. This means that there was a ~28% success rate (financially) for those who joined those Series D companies. Some were willing and able to work for a minimal salary and higher equity, whereas others asked for higher cash compensation because of their personal circumstances. Ciao Giulia, nice post and it is reflective. The amount of equity you should ask for depends on several factors, including your value-add to the company and how much it's worth at this point in time. The general rule of thumb for angel/seed stage rounds is that founders should sell between 10% and 20% of the equity in the company. Access 20,000+ Startup Experts, 650+ masterclass videos, 1,000+ in-depth guides, and all the software tools you need to launch and grow quickly. And what about others a young startup seeks to enlist in the cause, including key advisors whose insights and connections might increase its chances of success or perhaps an outside director with the right expertise to join a nascent board of directors? 35%-35%-30% causes problems. Existing investors will demand around 5%. After an A, you want to put it back to 10 to 15%, depending on how many managers you need, Currier says. Jos Ancer provides a thoughtful overview. Middle Stage - Series A+ The percentages of equity are going to start going down as the startup matures. The AngelList salary data is extensive. Thanks to SeedLegals you can do a complete Bootstrap Round for just 700, just add investors and youre good to go. The standard, she knew, was a roughly 1.5% to 2% stake for a key employee at the executive level. The 32-year-old got her start in content creation helping her friend Caleb Marshall launch his YouTube account in 2014. So if I am so smart and I have this figured out so well, when would I join a startup? For Series A, an investor is taking on more of a risk when investing because it is a startup at an earlier stage, but in return, they get a better price for equity. That sounds like a lot of money, but when Google and AWS are hiring tens of thousands of people who make $100k per year in stock alone, it's not much at all. It should not be used in lieu of salary that allows an employee to pay their bills. Its called a runway for a reason if you dont have lift off before you reach the end, things will come to a sudden stop! Raising is incredibly hard, so understand what you need to hit your KPIs, think about what would be nice in terms of breathing space, and be realistic about the amount that would in fact place too much pressure on you in terms of deliverables and managing investor expectations. Contacts Make sure that they prove youhow they can add that value if they offer mentoring, networking and other services as part of the deal. The entrepreneur can say, look, I strongly believe we have enough options to cover our needs, Feld and Mendelson advise. Khosla Ventures; GV; StartX (Stanford-StartX Fund) 5. For post-series B startups, equity numbers would be much lower. In business, equity refers to the amount of money each shareholder would get if all the company's assets were liquidated and debts paid off. This theory focuses on determining whether the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners. Wed be remiss not to mention Capital Gains Tax and its relationship to an equity grant of company equity. The problem is that these early stage success stories AREN'T normal in fact they aren't even really common. ), but if youre new to the industry, understanding how much to ask for in any given opportunity might be somewhat of a mystery to you. Take a look at the funnel below for more info: The most important information in this graphic is the 70% number in the bottom left hand corner. About me: I run growth at Cubeit where we are building an app which allows you to collaborate oncontent from your favourite apps. It usually happens a few months after the constitution of the startup. Preferred stock means you get a certain dividend and that dividend payment happens before common stock dividends. Tweet. Youve read Paul Grahams article, and understand that the amount of equity you should ask for is based on some basic math. These parameters weren't plucked out of thin air. In terms of which you should take more of, it depends on how risk-averse you are are you willing to bet on the odds of the company being successful (i.e. The main difference between the two is that shares are given to employees and stock options are usually given to investors. In short terms, equity refers to ownership of the company. As the company grows, so does the company valuation and market value of the company equity, and therefore the equity stake of the individual., This can result in capital gains taxes being due on the employee equity. The number will of course just be a benchmark. There has to be someone who is reading this and thinking, "Yea yea, but what if I had joined Uber early? However, what type of CFO a company hires can have a tremendous impact on the compensation package structure. Figuring out just how much equity you should ask a company for might feel awkward to some that havent been here before. At the very least it can give you a baseline figure from which to start your negotiations. Not cool. These would usually be for restricted stock or stock options with a standard 4-year vesting schedule. Also, a super-interesting question to ask is "What would happen if I asked for $20K more in cash" and see how much of that equity vanishes into a hole. Find the right formula for financial success. The most common - you have none of your equity for a set period of time - say, 2 years, and then you get it all at once.. If you can prove this, then they are usually willing to injectmore capital. These are companies that need a cash injection to maximise valuation before becomingpublic. 70% of the 1000 companies that were seed funded in the 2008-2010 timeframe had no exit. 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