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Comment by jmtame | Hacker News Reader

So, let's say this is all "theoretical" for now. A startup in CA (Stanford or Palo Alto likely) wants to fly me over to discuss salary/equity. They gave me a demo of their product and I think it has a lot of potential.

Here's my situation: I'm a college student (sophomore), been writing websites in html since age 9, very comfortable with many open, web-based languages, and very skilled in graphic design and marketing. I have most Adobe/Macromedia programs down. I would also be the first 'employee' at this startup (would prefer a co-founder position, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to negotiate on that level).

I've calculated it may cost me $2,000 a month to get a studio apartment. Aside from that, I'll have to start paying my financial aid 6 months after leaving school. Does anyone know what ballpark number I should be negotiating under?

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First of all, don't drop out of school.

In two years, find another start up and try to negotiate as much equity as you can. You must remember that you are taking a great risk that the company may rapidly implode and a sub-market salary alone is truly not adequate compensation for that risk.

Perhaps in the interim, you could try to start your own business in your spare time.

I'd suggest asking for 90% of a first-year salary for CS majors in the area (I'm guessing $55k or so?), plus 5% equity. Take it from there. You might get beat up on the 5% but if you're employee #1 it sounds reasonable.

Think hard though about leaving school. Not saying it's a bad idea, just think it through.

It would have to be one heck of a sweet deal to justify quitting school for, especially if you're getting parental support. Startups base their decisions on your demonstrable talent; everyone else looks at credentials. If the startup fails (80% chance, on average), not having the credential will be a liability.

I wouldn't take an employee position at a company (startup or no) in the bay area for under $100,000, and it would have to be pretty sweet to get me to accept that. For a startup, it would have to be people I really liked on top of that, because I don't put in 80-hour weeks for money alone.

And if you have parental support, quitting to take a job may well mean that that support never comes back in quite the same way, and finishing school, if you ever do, will be on your dime. And college is a lot more fun when you're 19 and carefree than when you're 30something and wondering if it justifies the tuition.

It's your call, though; this is one of those decisions that has the possibility of being something you later regret no matter which way you decide. Think long and hard.

There's very little parental support on this ;) My parents are the "get a degree, work for the rest of your life" type. If it were up to them, I'd live 5 minutes away from home for the rest of their lives.

School isn't very exciting, honestly. Most of the stuff they teach you early on is useful, but after that, they just drill down into very specific applications of certain things, in regards to programming and business. That stuff isn't too relevant to what I'd want to do, I'm finding, and it makes the coursework much less engaging and interesting.

Do not make the mistake of confusing school with classes. (Or the education with the degree, another common mistake.)

You have more free time now than you probably ever will again. You have incredible resources all around you -- libraries, books, computers, professors, other students. The cost of living is low, and you can easily get student loans and grants to cover it, and you have few to no other financial commitments. As soon as you leave the school bubble, all of that changes.

Classes are just the excuse to be there, and if you play your cards right they won't take up more than a quarter of your time.

"You have more free time now than you probably ever will again."

I haven't found that to be the case. I have much more time available to work on my own projects than I did in college. Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in terms of usable get-code-out-there blocks.

In college, I found that homework always got Parkinson's-Lawed so it took up all my available time. Either I was actively doing homework, or I was procrastinating on homework and couldn't justify working on other productive projects instead. Plus, available time in college tends to get broken up into 1-2 hour blocks between classes, after activities, before dinner, while waiting for friends to go out to a party, etc.

Now that I'm working, I have significantly less actual free time, but everything I have is mine. There's no work to take home, nothing hanging over my head when I'm not at work. And it's generally in large chunks, too. It does kinda suck not having a social life, but it does leave decent-sized blocks available for a startup.

Try adding a wife and some kids and report back!

Lack of a social life takes care of that one. ;-)

I forgot you are a geek! :)

I agree. I attend one of the top schools where you're weeded out of the system very quickly unless you devote a lot of time to studying.

At least in my school, it's either you're all in (spending 50+ hours a week in and out of class), you barely get by (spending only time in class and minimal time out), or you get kicked out very quickly (spending only the time you have in classes).

I find myself coming up with mediocre grades and only mediocre startup work, when trying to do both :\

Can't you switch school/subjects/whatever? I thought it could get more interesting later on, as you could get involved in research.

5% seems high for an employee, even the first. Usually the entire options pool is only about 20%, so if you give 5% for employee #1, there isn't much left over for anyone else.

I'd read that about 1.5% is typical for employee #1, and it decreases exponentially from there. I was offered 0.1% at the first startup I worked at (high school grad, there only for a year, employee #13) and 0.01% at one startup I interviewed at after college (college degree, good credentials, employee #22).

I ended up taking a job at a startup with no equity but a much larger salary - as in, $15K larger. I'd recommend this route. $15K is yCombinator funding in a year, any given startup is likely to fail anyways (my employer might actually succeed, but it's the slow-growing type), and if you don't have equity you're less likely to feel responsible for the success of the company, which means you have no compunction against leaving work at work and using your home time to work on your own startup.

You should be able to do way better than $2k a month for an apartment in Palo Alto. More like $1200, and with roomates way less.

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