I have been working at big and respected tech companies for years, and lately I decided that I wanted to do something different and join a startup.
At first I was very happy to find that many companies were interested in me, and several of them sound promising companies, but when the compensation conversations start, I can't help to feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick.
I have no expectations that any startup would match my current comp, but after crunching the numbers of expected equity and using VERY optimistic scenarios, the opportunity cost is too big to ignore. For reference:
- I make around $0.9M-$1.2M per year today. Is a public company, so everything is liquid.
- If I accept a position with 1% equity, the company exit would need to be at least $500M just to match my previous comp.
- Investors are getting a much better deal than I am, their money can buy more equity that I would be able to buy with my work.
So far I considered the following options:
- Accept my golden handcuffs, and stay where I am.
- Accept that this is the price for the privilege of working at a startup.
- Become a founder myself, so the exit value doesn't need to be so insanely high.
- Become an angel investor, since they are getting a much better deal, I might as well join them.
I'm curious with other people think about this situation, while I think I'm in an uncommon (but very fortunate) situation, is hard to believe I'm the first one. I'm interesting to hear if I'm actually missing something and is not as bad as it sounds, or if there is other options which I did not consider.