engineer number 6, employee number 8. joined pre-series A
salary: 75K, .5% of the company, location: bay area
engineers 1-5 have lower salary, but 3-10% of company
recent (useless, IMO) VP hires are making six figures with a larger % of the company. they joined after raising series A.
2) What is your BATNA? That's jargon for "Best Alternative for a Negotiated Agreement": if you don't get what you want what will you do? Will you walk away? Is your company f!cked if you walk away?
Hopefully this can frame your thinking.
Here's another way you might be able to justify a re-negotiation.
Think of what value your company will have five years from now if it gets sold/goes public, etc. Let's say it's $100M; your options are worth $500K.
Now think of how much you'd be making if you weren't at a startup. Let's say it's $95K.
If you took your $20K and put it in the stock market and earned 7% a year on it (that's almost a sure thing as that's the historical yield on the market), you'd have $115K.
Now how likely is it that your startup is going to be worth $100M. Let's say it's 20%. Then your $500K is worth 0.2500= $100K.
From that perspective you'd be better off working somewhere else under your current employment contract.
I have no idea if these numbers are legitimate in your case, but it could be another way of you getting a better deal.
Let me know if you want any more ideas.
You can't even rent an apartment on that out there, can you? Unless you have a roommate.
I am not saying I expected too much more, but thought at least $90k for anyone with any degree of talent would be reasonable.
I mean, crap, $90k would still be WELL below median income for experienced software engineers in Silicon Valley, wouldn't it? Salary.com seems to indicate it would, but that could be a biased source.