Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity

Post by dareal » Sun, Jun 16, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

abvdasker wrote: post #615

goalonetwo wrote: post #598

In my 20s I joined a couple startups as "early engineer" or "founding engineer". I quickly realized those are the absolute worst positions to be in. You take almost as much risk as the founders but almost none of the upside. One startup died, the other one sold for 100m$. Out of that I saw 400k$ as an exit. Not too bad but even with that exit I ended up making way less than if I joined a FAANG. In both cases the foun…

I second this. I took a large salary cut to be 1/2 of an engineering team at a seed stage startup for ~1.25%. After 2 years of pretty grueling work I left to go back to big tech for 3x the pay. I wouldn't call it a total waste of time in the sense that it made me a better engineer, but it certainly wasn't worth it financially. The company still exists and has had a relatively successful series A and "A extension" but…

Post by KingMob » Mon, Jun 17, 2024, 11:33 AM UTC

dumbfounder wrote: post #881

KingMob wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...? Much of what you described applies to early employees, too.

I have always taken a lower salary than early employees. And had periods before raising money and after the money dried up where I was taking no salary. I think it is way way way more common for founders to do this than early employees.