Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited?

I'm a senior software engineer with over 12 years of experience.

6 out 7 start ups I worked for never had a liquidation event that resulted in any monetary gain.

The one that did ( i was employee #97 and worked there for almost 6 years) and they finally had a 2ndary offer which allowed me to sell 15% of my shares, for about 7K, but because it's short term gains, about 4K is what I got after taxes.

The rest of the shares were completely worthless because they couldn't be sold. I am not disappointed. I never assumed the options would ever be worth anything - I choose my employment based on Salary and work life balance. Options are just a nice bonus, if they do happen.

First startup, I traded nearly all of my salary over four years for stock options: $0

Second startup, I was told I'd get 5% of the company (no contract though). I quit after a year without pushing the topic: $0

Third job was not a startup, but it was a fairly small company, and I've made nearly two million in tax deferred accounts having made a healthy salary the entire time. I'm retiring this year.

I learned a lot of great things at those first two companies, but I would never recommend a startup from a financial point of view. I almost joined a third startup, but I didn't, and they folded as well. I suspect you've got better odds going to Vegas and putting your salary on a number from the roulette table.

Startup 1: $50k for 1 year (in the 90s, do the math what it would be right now)

Big company for some time

Startup 2: $0 for 2 years

Startup 3: $0 for 2 years

Startup 4: $0 for 2 years

Startup 5: $500k for 4 years

Startup 6: $1m for 1 year (still somewhat in play because 3/4 of my options got converted into the options of a public company as a result of acquisition, and I got RSU handcuffs on top of that)

All numbers before tax. I hope I'm done with my startup adventures. Lost taste for it.

Financially, based on my experience, startups do not make any sense as an employee.

Mentally, Startup 5 made me question my faith in humanity.

Joined among the first 10 employees. The company grew to 200 employees and 400M valuation in 4 years. Sold last year a portion of my vested shares for 1M to investors as part of a secondary transaction, and I still have a decent amount (70%) of vested shares and unvested options, since the company hasn’t exited yet and management has no plan of doing so in the short/medium term.

I’m not counting on the rest of the equity to be worth as much because I don’t believe in the company ability to execute well at this point, too many changes diluting the quality and the mission. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to sell more as part of the secondary transaction (company rule), otherwise I would have dumped it all (the vested part that is).

Yet I consider myself lucky after having read all these comments, but had I gone to FAANG 4 years ago my financial outcome would have been very similar, if not bigger.

I joined as a regular non-manager, non-lead employee. Actually, I started as an intern, and was offered a full time job immediately after that. I was employee #~100. I sold 1625 shares in a secondary round for $14,000. When the company eventually exited, I sold 27,375 shares for $1.1M. I have 1000 shares remaining. If I hadn’t sold anything, my shares would be worth about $5.1M today.

I was employee #1. It sold to google. All employee options were wiped out.

I joined a successful startup about ten months before it was acquired for several hundred million. The deal somehow led to a lot of employees losing their options (myself included). There was some discussion of a lawsuit but it fizzled.

I joined an already-successful ~400 person company with an already-published S-1 at around year 8 or 9, and worked there for around three years in total. I was given options representing such a small fraction of the company that it wasn't memorable (perhaps a hundredth or thousandth of one percent?). My options were underwater for several months after a lackluster IPO, but eventually the stock picked up enough steam to make me around $300,000.

Of all the companies/startups I've worked for, this one was by far the most corporate and least startup-ey, yet this was the only one that made me more than a penny after an exit, despite working at a few other startups that have had "exits."

Startup 1: $0 Startup 2: $0 Startup 3: Would’ve made ~$40k had I not left so early (left after 7 months, sold for a couple hundred million like 6 months later) Startup 4: Publicly traded now, will see how it turns out but hopefully $100k or more

Overall, simply bank on it being nothing

I joined a startup in 2000. All employees starting before me were offered ~50k shares in the company as part of compensation while I was offered ~50k options. I was told options were the more correct way of doing way of doing things and other than the strike price they were essentially the same.

As a junior employee who didn't know any better (and no negotiation leverage anyway) I accepted the deal. Fast forward a couple of years and as a potential sale of the company approached it was announced that the stock was going to split 10 for 1. What this means is everyone with shares now had 10x, while option numbers were unaffected (ignoring that the stock price is now 10% of what it was).

When the company was bought the price per share was equal to the strike price of a second grant of options I had, making them worthless. I suspect most of the employee options were at this strike price.

A fellow employee with shares made 40x what I did for starting a month earlier. My payout was <$30k.

Startup 1: $0

Startup 2: $0

Startup 3: $3,000,000

Startup 4: $0

That's over the course of 25 years, with a few stints at non-startups as well.

I once joined a company that already had several hundred employees as an entry level software engineer. It was my least favorite job: I couldn't find a fit and I only lasted just over a year. However, during that year they IPO'd, and because I made it over the vesting cliff I was able to buy my options on my way out.

Ballpark numbers: I had 300 options at $5. post-IPO price was around $15. I did the "sell to buy" thing, so I sold roughly 100 shares to pay for buying all 300. I haven't sold the other ones yet but the stock is north of $50/share. It seems like there's less than 20k shares total in circulation. (that's like an order of magnitude less than I expected? I took "shares held(000s)" and divided by "% Own", and rounded.)

I have the impression that most of the "old-timer" employees did quite well as long as they sold their stocks at the right time: one guy spent 6+ months traveling and then took his time finding his next job, another guy thinks he might be able to retire in his '40s.

edit: as elsewhere in this thread, I also worked at a startup that failed ($0), and I've left a couple that to my knowledge are still going ($ -4k , because both times i bought options on my way out just in case they make it)

I was co-founder of a software company’s old during internet bubble. My partner funded everything so we split shares 80-20. Then we both got substantially diluted by two rounds of investment and 140 employee share packages. I think i had 5% at the end.

When sold we got 15% in cash, and 85% in stock in the public internet company, that was locked up for one year. The cash was a $800,000+ check. A year later i sold the stock for maybe $150k.

Made 1 million on a company exit of about 100 million as technical co-founder. Started with 15% but got diluted to 1% after several rounds of funding including down rounds.

Startup 1: 30k (Joined as a Junior Engineer)

Startup 2: 2M$ (Joined as a mid level engineer, built the product ground up to scaling it to millions of users and hundreds of customers)

The current company I’m at just sold about a month ago for $140mil. I was one of the first engineers (the three of us originals all started at the same time) and started a few months after initial funding was raised. Between my purchased options and non-purchased vested options I made about $130k and have another about $40k in remaining options that are converting over. I was kept on by the acquiring company and given a new company package with about $40k of additional RSUs that vest over 4 years.

There are a few answers in this thread from 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116137

Employee # 3 at a startup, my first full time jr dev job. Eventually talked my way into .33% equity.

$6M exit, our shares were bought with the acquiring company's publicly traded shares. Those shares had a 6 month cliff before we could sell them.

~$9 a share at the time of acquisition, ~$4 a share at the end of the 6 months. Sold about 1 year after acquisition for ~$10/share, now at ~$17 a share and climbing.

Made $11k pretax in the end. (+$4k cash gift from founder that got a bigger payout, due to the board not approving more equity for employees pre-acquisition)

It's really interesting to see $100M+ exits that have resulted in trivial sums for founders and early employees after multiple rounds of dilution and/or VCs with preferred shares taking home the spoils.

I have always optimised for salary although I can see why a young engineer with no dependants might opt for the gamble of a big payday instead, likely without really understanding their true chances.

Too much industry focus is heaped on 'unicorns' when these kind of companies really are a drop in the ocean.

CTO on founding team. Started out with 10% equity. Co. is now 6 years old. After a merger (diluted by 40%), $10m investment (diluted more), $4m strategic investment (diluted more), then investors taking money off the table first for an exit event - I stand to make $100k if we sell at $20m and $600k if we sell at $40m (currently valued at $20mish). That's pre tax.

I was employee 30 at a startup. I worked there about 3.5 years, and then left. The company was acquired a year later. I made about $115,000, which frankly is a lot less than I would have made at a public company. My friend at Twitter during the same timeframe made close to $1M, and my friend I worked with at the startup left to join Facebook and also made over $1M.

At a startup that folded, $0. (Failing is an exit!) At a startup acquired by a larger company, about $20k. Neither made up for the delta vs market rate salary.

After taxes and interest on the purchase loan, about $485k. The golden handcuffs the acquirer wanted ended up being worth more than that, though.

Was young and stupid. Joined a startup (Kno formely Kakai) as #12 employee. Made $0. Would have been negative amount if I hadn't ripped up my early exercise papers before leaving. Company took O($xxxM) and due to mismanagement & nepotism sold for O($xM). Nobody made any money. Some lost a lot.

Started at a company that technically was not a startup at the point I joined (10 years old — 300 employees). I got lucky and 6 months in the company was acquired and all my stock vested immediately. Made about $15k but was given $200k in RSUs at the new company. I can’t complain.

I got lucky; they had a successful IPO and I made around 150k based on working there 1.5 years. I joined fairly late (employee 400-something) at a startup that was very secretive about their finances and customers, but clearly doing well, if you were paying attention:

They had taken on a relatively small amount of VC funding when I joined, so just doing the math on the number of high-quality employees and the fact that they were making market-rate salary offers made it obvious that they had been successfully running on their business model for a long time, even though they wouldn't disclose finances or customer numbers to non-employees. And sure enough, they eventually IPO'ed as a company that had been (mostly) profitable for a while.

About $2500. It was basically a lousy tip for about 14 months work.

Some context: The initial offer was either higher salary and lower equity, or lower salary and higher equity. The difference in pay was $5000 / year. Given the nature of the exit, I felt like a decent thing to do was at least make up the difference in pay. (The terms of the deal were confidential.)

Things were eventually "made right" by the new owner.

The problem with startup equity is that employees almost always have little bargaining power and always are kept in the dark about the real value of the equity. It almost always turns into a lottery ticket... Some people make out well, others don't, and always for reasons out of the employees control.

I joined a company which had already IPO'd, 1 year before I joined. And had had 14 years of its runway. They gave me some options, which would mature in 5 years. During that period, the stock exploded. Which the company founders, themselves never expected, else they would have given off much less to employees. Some other employees who had the stock matured, sold it.

They gave me stock options worth 300 $ but it increased 2000 times, in a span of 10 years. It increased so much, that I sold it eventually(to avoid all eggs in one basket). Got myself a house. Loan free. And started my own startup. Which I run till date.

First company if I had chosen to exercise when I left maybe 10k. A second company I chose to give up 5k in salary to get some shares which I opted not to exercise when I left. Now, I follow these rules:

1) optimize for cash. Stock is cherry on top. 2) if weighing two offers the one with RSUs should be weighted more. No "handcuffs" needing to pay to exercise if you leave.

Number 2 is referring to later stage private company. I haven't worked at a company where strike price is pennies or whatever, or a public company where you can sell at time of exercise. Then handcuffs may be worth it.

I've worked for around 10-15 startups now over the years. Only one meaningful exit or equity:

NEWR from 2009 to 2011, employee #20 or so, 20k shares (0.05%), exercised most of my vested ~10k before leaving, sold post-IPO-lockup at ~$36/share for a gross of around $385k . Would have gone up if I had waited to sell, to around $1m now. Most of my former coworkers are independently wealthy now, solid folks who all absolutely deserve it. Should have negotiated for more shares or cash, stayed longer, and exercised all vested shares. Live and learn I guess.

I probably lost about $3,500-4,000. Startup was having financial issues, and got last minute funding. People were asking to give up salary for more equity. I was employee #1, and really enjoyed working there, so I took the deal. I truly believed with had a great product, but that's not enough for a company to succeed. Company went out of business 6 months later.

Not a huge financial loss, but I learnt a valuable lesson.

Five out of seven startups were zero. One was $17K, another was $2K. At all but one place the salaries were not great.

I have done far, far better at larger companies in terms of salary and stock programs. If I'd stayed one of the big companies, I'd likely be able to retire right now (not that I will -- I like writing software and I plan to continue doing it as long as I can, ideally well into my 70s).

First employee. Company sold for $1B in 6 years.

$2.95m before taxes.

I made about $75k when my last company IPOed. I had worked there for 2 years before and had a relatively junior salary and not many options. I had a range of options at different strike prices, they averaged out to about 100% gain, but some were more and some were less.

People who had been there long had both lower option prices and more options and made quite a bit.

~$1.5K, circa 2003

This is the one startup I worked for that exited. I was only there for a little over a year. But for a few months, they couldn't make payroll and issued stock instead.

Ironically it was the project that I was working on which ultimately led to the acquisition. Not really because I was writing brilliant code though, so I'm not bitter about that.

first job out of school, started as an entry level at a startup with ~$20MM in funding, employee #60 or so. Stuck around six years through an additional hundred $MM and an exit for $3-400MM and was the most senior director at the time.

Walked away with $140k after taxes

One of the first employees, the company got sold in about 3 years from starting, enterprise space but very little revenue and a frankly half baked product. I think of it as a team acquisition, made about 5k and 40k in RSUs to vest over 4 years.

Startup 1 (2 years): $0. Acqui-hired for less than total investment raised. I had long left by then but had vested shares which were wiped out.

Startup 2 (6 months): $10k. Mainly from the profit-sharing of the startup incubator, not from actual equity.

$0 at one and $80,000 at another. I spent several thousand on something I wanted, and banked the rest. My boss bought a nice car. Oh, and a third sold and the buyer had a clause where if you quit you got shit.

startup1: $0 (company went bankrupt, wiped out stock holders, reformed, went bankrupt again.) startup2: $0 (acquired, but all common holders were wiped out since it all went to preferred stockholders.) startup3: $0 (did not exercise my options. company is still going, has not been acquired.) startup4: $10K (did not make up for my salary decrease when I joined.) startup5: still working on it... not optimistic.

The good news: none of this has mattered. After 20 years of work, I've done well through traditional savings and investment.

40k and it was small for how long I was there. I heard others got more for being with the company less time I was. A bit of wisdom here. Be selfish. Get everything you reasonably can.

Startup 1: $0 (company still going but options are worthless) Startup 2: $0 - options cancelled in lieu of ~$2k in bonus.

-$6k The startup was a scam (as most of them in silicon valley). I later came to know and left after 1 and half years.

$1000 from a part-time gig quasi startup, and $0 from a startup that got acquired.

This thread is depressing I´m not even earning 1k/month here in Spain.

Employee #40 at a medical device company after working as a contractor for one year and then asked me to join. Received a first round of ESOP options a bit under the valuation price ($20 at the time). Then RSUs as bonuses for the next 5 years. After company started to ship, shares went up and even reached over $100 at one point. Sold half of my stock between $70 and $90 and made around $450k before taxes. We were partially lucky that those were the recession years and investors were looking to put their money in less risky ventures, and as far away as possible from real estate.

I quit a couple of years before the company got bought by a major player, leaving my remaining unvested stock which would have been worth another $300k at the moment of the acquisition. Good money for me as my first job in the US, although not as good as a bunch of colleagues before me that were turned into senior management and made millions. Loved the job, and I would have stayed if they hadn't assigned me a new boss that, albeit not a bad person, his professional demeanor was awful.

Have worked for 3 other startups since then. The next one, also a medical device company, looked promising. Joined as their first contractor/employee but I could not secure equity. They also changed directions on their development so I left. Salary was not terribly low but half of what I usually make. They are currently supposedly doing well and are shipping product after 5 years, and received around $30M funding mostly from a Silicon Valley VC last year to accelerate their growth. I know other employees left after me for similar reasons. They got compensated even less than me.

The following one again as a first contractor/employee in the connected home space with some promises for equity if the company soared (founders had done that before and were successful, with strong ties to Apple). Salary was not superb considering my skills, but above market. However after 2 years the founders could not do a buyback and the company was absorbed by their single investor, a big security business that was just in the process of rolling their IPO. They only offered us employees options at market price with a lot of restrictions. They were also going to reduce my salary and obviously I didn't like the terms.

Currently almost two years at a SF startup, with all the pains of working and living in the preposterous SF zeitgeist under a small startup company salary. Own more than 1% of the company but I know it will get diluted after we receive our series A, and where I don't have much control of the circumstances.

Before all these deeds, founded my own startup with a friend right out of college, mainly building industrial systems. We were naive and business inept, never made serious money but managed to stay alive for five years doing some cool customer projects, having fun and learning a lot. Plus the gratifying feeling of having control over our destiny, even if it was a bit for a small period of time. Hands down one of the best experiences of my life.

There is a reason startups - technology startups in particular - are declining in number, specially in the US. The field is too mature, consolidated and institutionalized now. There are some niches and pockets of opportunity, however competition is intense. Sadly most affairs and regulations are rigged against employees, and if you are not being compensated at market level with all the associated perks, you will never get rewarded as you deserve as an employee compared to a founder or investor in the minuscule event that the business is successful.

If you really want to be part of a startup, first try to work at a FAANG type of company even if the idea does not appeal to you. Leverage their massive resources to learn and grow your wealth. Save enough to a point that you are comfortable and don't need to worry about money anymore, whatever that means to you. Then, and only then, if you still feel the need to scratch your entrepreneurial itch, make your move. The full monty - not as an employee but a founder. Your increased experience and business network will further increase your chances of success. And you will also have come across real industry problems that desperately need solutions. Win-win.

In this age where work is changing so fast and the future of security for workers is uncertain, hoping for the best and planning for the worst has more relevance than ever.

My 2c.

So far 0$ (I would guess this is the median, as most do not succeed)

~ 25k gross

I was the 2nd employee too.

$230k

$5k.

This is pretty late, but I was feeling retrospective on a sunday evening so let's see... the tldr;

#0 = 0

#1 = 0, ~500k options on day 1 eventually underwater and unexercised

#2 = 0

#3 = 25k

#4 = 0, but left unexercised options that were worth 500k about 8 years later

#5 = 0

#6 = 100k with additional options exercised and held

#7 = current gig, tbd

Background: I'm a software developer first, a good architect and team-lead but a reluctant manager.

startup #0 was a summer gig doing "web consulting" before my last year of college. I got put on a huge e-commerce project with tight deadlines (in C++). Slept under my desk for a few weeks and got it shipped. I rearranged my double major to a single degree to graduate early and the bigger company hired me away from the consulting gig. They had just gone public and were pretty flush. Turned out the web consulting shop actually got acquired and staying would have been more lucrative. Oh well.

startup #1 went public shortly before I was hired, ended up with approx $500k in options which were underwater by the time I could vest. Learned a lot about options, it was the first dot com bust. Had some great experiences, went to India, went to Japan, went to SF. Learned a lot about running software dev projects with global teams.

startup #2 was a combination consulting + java middleware/framework company, which was kind of a new idea at the time (again, post dot com crisis, pre-rails, java was new). We were building VB6 for the web, basically. Doing consulting work to eat our own dog food using our own tools. A few dry months led to missing a few paychecks here and there, and it would always take a really long time to get re-paid. Eventually our largest customer left and that wasn't enough work to sustain the whole company. Learned a lot though, especially about software schedule estimation (it's not THAT hard if you really put the prep work in).

startup #3 I was a co-founder, we were aqui-hired for zero up front but future promises/profit share etc. Ran as a small subsidiary of the parent company so we stayed independent and sank/swam on our own merits. After a year of zero salary (credit cards) we could eventually pay ourselves and got up to 6 employees and generated enough profit to be sustainable but I lost my interest in the product space. Sold my fraction for about @25k and moved on. Also learned a lot on that project. Parent company is still around and from what I can tell, very profitable.

startup #4 was a job offer from someone I met at startup #1. It was Ad-tech, which I have come to loathe, but I grinded it out there for a few years. When I left, I was so burned out I didn't exercise any of my shares which if I remember would have been about a $1k check. Of course, a mere 8 years later they were quite successful and those shares would have been worth about $500k.

I never took vacation at any of those previous companies, a span of about 10 years. At that point I was able to take a year off. Unlike #2 and #3, #4 were solidly profitable and paid well and I was able to save a bunch of money. Paid off all credit cards and will aim to never have debt again.

startup #5 was a facebook game company. Some kind of farming game thing, but not the famous one, a ripoff of a ripoff. Still, I met a bunch of great people there and learned a lot about cranking out content to pay the bills. At one point, there was a rumor of an acquisition by the famous farming game company, but that never came to pass.

startup #6 was a good experience, I worked with talented folks, got to travel to Europe for work, had the 401k etc. That's the place I worked the longest and it was managed the best out of all of the various dysfunctional places I've worked. Got to go to conferences, travel, work on open source projects, company wide hackathons that actually ended up in the product. Good work/life balance. After 6 or so years a new leadership team came on board and things started to change. I got an offer from #7 and decided to take it. I was able to exercise some options before they expired. Sold some and held the rest. The experience from #4 informed that choice. In the past I let a lot of options expire when I'd leave a place because I wasn't that personally enthusiastic about any more. Now I see it as leaving the bet on the table that might hit in 10 years, but if/when it does it will be worth it.

startup #7 is tbd. It's an interesting project, but it's back to the 60 hour / week grind with a bad commute and much less work/life balance.

I'm in my mid 40's now and I've pretty much decided that I'm done with the startup thing after this. If #7 doesn't hit then my next gig I'll go to some BigCo and apply all this weird knowledge and experience making software engineering teams function.

I do have savings, more than most, but definitely not enough to retire yet. Startups tend to underpay on salary. One side effect of all this is that I also have no family/kids/etc. I think that's partly due to choice but also partly due to having worked my ass off for the last 20+ years. I worked weekends, holidays, and 100+ hour weeks. I bought tickets for shows and never went. I've had my laptop open on Christmas day troubleshooting something or other that I don't even remember now. I was always able to do that because I never had a family. In the long run, I don't think the companies I worked for were any better off for that sacrifice. In the short term it always seemed necessary but in retrospect, the forces that made these companies successful or not were always much bigger than me.

startup1: 0$

startup2: 0$

startup3: 20000$

All: Watch out for survivor bias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w