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Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

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Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#121

Post by jrozner »

rpm33 wrote: post #92
jrozner wrote: post #49

The current company I’m at just sold about a month ago for $140mil. I was one of the first engineers (the three of us originals all started at the same time) and started a few months after initial funding was raised. Between my purchased options and non-purchased vested options I made about $130k and have another about $40k in remaining options that are converting over. I was kept on by the acquiring company and give…

What % of the current company (startup) did you own when you were made the offer originally ?

My original option grant was for 0.00225%. I optimized for salary when I was hired, due to the stock at my previous two startups being worthless, and didn’t fight for more. Between series A and B we were going through some rough times as a company and I was granted a second grant of the same number of shares but not sure what the percentage turned into.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#122

Post by lma21 »

aminotaa wrote: post #114

Startup 1: $50k for 1 year (in the 90s, do the math what it would be right now) Big company for some time Startup 2: $0 for 2 years Startup 3: $0 for 2 years Startup 4: $0 for 2 years Startup 5: $500k for 4 years Startup 6: $1m for 1 year (still somewhat in play because 3/4 of my options got converted into the options of a public company as a result of acquisition, and I got RSU handcuffs on top of that) All numbers…

Thank you for sharing, could you please expand on that last sentence? It's quite intriguing

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#123

Post by jinonoel »

Startup 1 (2 years): $0. Acqui-hired for less than total investment raised. I had long left by then but had vested shares which were wiped out.

Startup 2 (6 months): $10k. Mainly from the profit-sharing of the startup incubator, not from actual equity.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#124

Post by seattle_spring »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #37
sk5t wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of an IPO'd company--meaning one that's listed on a public market like the NYSE or NASDAQ--with such thin trading, nor have I ever heard of option grants measured in hundreds...

I got an option grant once for hundreds. It was for a promotion and, whatever the intended effect, I felt like "why did you even bother?"

Me as well (well, it was 1000 shares for a promo, but close enough). I left shortly thereafter.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#125

Post by dyeje »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #110
dyeje wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. I often see absurb compensation packages posted on HN and have never seen anything close to them in real life.

The fact that you are doubting the information I wrote in the previous comment, suggesting the parent poster to not necessarily believe them, is disturbing. I can only say I truly got those packages and I’m an average engineer. I suggest you ask to the close friends you have working at FAANG if those are true.

First of all, I didn't read your previous comment and you are not the parent post of the comment I replied to.

I am sorry you are 'disturbed' by my skepticism of random people on the internet, but I don't have friends working at FAANG so all I have to go off is my own experience and publicly available info. Based on those, I find it hard to believe how many people here post that they make 500k+.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#126

Post by macklemoreshair »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #116
macklemoreshair wrote: post #104

First employee. Company sold for $1B in 6 years. $2.95m before taxes.

How much did you have when you initially joined, that got diluted to ~0.3%? I guess somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5%?

Yup

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#128

Post by billhathaway »

civility wrote: post #56

First startup, I traded nearly all of my salary over four years for stock options: $0 Second startup, I was told I'd get 5% of the company (no contract though). I quit after a year without pushing the topic: $0 Third job was not a startup, but it was a fairly small company, and I've made nearly two million in tax deferred accounts having made a healthy salary the entire time. I'm retiring this year. I learned a lot o…

How long were you at the third job?

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#129

Post by notyourday »

rubicon33 wrote: post #59
deanmoriarty wrote: post #58

Joined among the first 10 employees. The company grew to 200 employees and 400M valuation in 4 years. Sold last year a portion of my vested shares for 1M to investors as part of a secondary transaction, and I still have a decent amount (70%) of vested shares and unvested options, since the company hasn’t exited yet and management has no plan of doing so in the short/medium term. I’m not counting on the rest of the eq…

Seriously? 4 years at FAANG would net you $1,000,000 savings? That seems... crazy. Can someone explain how that works? Your salary alone living in the bay area, definitely isn't goin to net you $1,000,000 in savings.

It depends on how you live. I know people whose entire expenses in NYC are $1.5k/mo, including food who make about $300k/year. I'm sure their bank balances grow like crazy.

I would not want to live that way but they seem to be pretty happy.

Re: Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

#130

Post by Tloewald »

gammateam wrote: post #40
BurningFrog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell us more about "somehow"?

what needs to be explained, a several hundred million exit is LOWWWWWW. If they had a series B for 20 million or so, or a series C for close to or above 100 million, then the valuation itself was WAY more than that. A few hundred million exit will result in ZILCH (almost $zero) for any common stock shareholder every single time, unless the company was in series A or lower. VCs have a separate share class called Prefe…

The exit was in 2005, and several hundred million was not bad (although it came after a failed effort to go public for somewhere north of a billion). I was very new to the startup game and had comparatively little at stake and didn’t understand any of the language but I was invited to some gatherings of engineers who had been screwed by the deal.

My impression is that founders or early investors often have a lot of ability to dilute the value of stock prior to making a deal (there’s description of similar shenanigans early in “Chaos Monkeys”)

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