91–100 of 943 posts
Founder liquidity doesn’t make up for much in the average situation. Making $400k after making $100k for 4 years doesn’t really change much. It gets you upto junior engineer level. The underestimated play is becoming a cofounder to a great CEO 2nd time founder.
Getting out of the SV bubble this is an insane amount of money. I boostrap my business and I make 40k a year. Most senior SWE around here make less than 100k.
I was mentally, physically and emotionally worn out when I left my previous startup after being an early employee. Despite that I really wanted to stay and be part of what my friends and I were building. Had I had the chance to 'de-risk my life' with some equity to replenish my empty bank account, which was empty from taking an early employee salary, I may have been able to stay but in the end I had to get out. Getti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have known zero founders who have turned down an option to take money off the table (and zero A raises that offered that to employees). Have seen companies offer this to employee's And companies that let employee's take money off the table at series A are also likely to be generous with meaningless titles; that is they will let early employee's call themselves founders.
At a Series A?!? That's insane to me. We're talking about the first priced funding round for the company, right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Never took a dime off the table, was never offered it, never asked for it Well they certainly wouldn't volunteer the offer without you asking for it.
> The founder in this scenario was offered $400,000 of liquidity at Series A and $750,000 at Series B and encouraged to do so by their board of investors to de-risk their own life. This is from the article. I would tend to agree with you.
I think the paragraph above that quote explains it. They're talking about founders that "mortgaged their house and lived on ramen noodles for years." It actually sounds like they got screwed out of some equity. Rather than pay themselves a reasonable salary to support their lifestyle as they build the company, they instead traded equity for a one-time payment. That's a shitty deal, and I want to know who this predatory VC is so I make sure I never take money from them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously everything is local. 40k is about $20/hr, which where I live is just a tad above what new fast food workers make. Fresh CS grads make more than $100k (or at least they did, obviously the past year and a half has been brutal). This is not in SV.
In most of the world (even just considering developed nations) fresh CS grads do not make more than $100k. Senior software engineers don't even make that much anywhere in Europe or most of Canada.
I was mentally, physically and emotionally worn out when I left my previous startup after being an early employee. Despite that I really wanted to stay and be part of what my friends and I were building. Had I had the chance to 'de-risk my life' with some equity to replenish my empty bank account, which was empty from taking an early employee salary, I may have been able to stay but in the end I had to get out. Getti…
If you were early, why didn't you purchase your options and file an 83b?
we did this on our crypto token grants though. once we realized we can play with the prices much more than with securities and that vesting isn’t standardized by any law, we granted ourselves deeply discounted tokens in a vesting schedule of like 3 months, the whole grant being a couple hundred dollars and launched the token the next day. mailing the IRS the election was beautiful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At a Series A?!? That's insane to me. We're talking about the first priced funding round for the company, right?
These days there is typically an institutional seed round before that.
Only a small percentage of tech companies raise a series A or beyond. To me, this just seems like a capital-efficient alternative to the founder increasing their salary that could be negotiated. I had no such perception that this was some “secret” thing, I assumed it happened since you can do whatever you want if the investors and founders agree that it makes sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most of the world (even just considering developed nations) fresh CS grads do not make more than $100k. Senior software engineers don't even make that much anywhere in Europe or most of Canada.
Why the disparity? Especially with Canada - no language barrier and no time zone differences. Why doesn’t the free market equalize Canadian dev wages with American ones?
The best startups have a concept which is summed up thusly: “We all go to the pay window at the same time.” It’s ok for founders to take a little bit of money off of the table if they extend that to their employees as well. Asymmetry is where things get weird. I’ve seen many founders who got deep into the fundraising cycles without ever realizing they could take a cent out. VCs will constantly tell you to let it all…
It’s like trading windows and blackout periods for employee RSUs, but equity selloff on a schedule for the c suite.