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Comment by dawhizkid | Hacker News Reader

Even with (a) it's tough. If you're employee 1-13 you're getting maybe 10-20bps. At a unicorn valuation that is $1-$2m before you take into account dilution, liquidation preferences, taxes, etc etc etc.

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Only a single data point, but I was #13 at a (now) unicorn and was offered 45 bps for a new grad role. This was 7 years ago, though, so maybe the market's changed.

(I, in my infinite wisdom, traded it down to 25 bps for 15 k$/yr more in salary. Whoops)

If you're employee 1, you should be getting 1% or north of that. If you're employee 13 you're probably getting 25-50 bps if you negotiate.

Outside of a very senior employee #1, I think the point is that even achieving a unicorn valuation does not guarantee extremely early employees much wealth, at least more than you'd get going down a more traditional big co path.

If you are picking lottery tickets I would agree with you. What I think the point of the article is, is that investors aren’t picking lottery tickets and neither should you. Given 1000 startups to choose from, your EV is negative as compared to working for BigCo. You can’t work for 1000 startups, though, and investors don’t invest in every startup asking for money either. They’re selective and expect that this process will result in positive returns over simply putting the cash in public tech stocks.

Can you narrow 1000 companies down to 20 that have a better than average chance of success? Sure you can! And you should, and you shouldn’t treat the options as worthless.

I totally agree, which is why I have not worked for a startup or small business for close to a decade. And I’m by nature a gambler! It’s just they in the current climate the %unicorn x %share x valuation expected value calculation is not favorable to employees. Even for employee 1-10.

All it would take i think is for companies to start offering larger stakes to employees, with the other two factors remaining the same, and the math might make it worthwhile. But they won’t do it.

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