Ask HN: What am I (designer) worth to your startup [infographic] | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What am I (designer) worth to your startup [infographic]

9 pointsed20913 comments

This is an open question about the best way to approach startups I'd like to be part of and also what I can reasonably expect in salary/perks etc

With any young company the risks are higher. I'd love to be an investor and spread that risk over 5, 10, 15 or more smaller investments but as an early employee I have to go all-in.

As a result I want to mitigate some of that risk by letting actual investors do some of the risk assessment. Who and how much the startup has raised should be a good indication. Of course the down side is that there's probably less stock options left over if the round is big and the investors well known.

What I'd like to know is what sort of salary/stock options/perks should I expect/ask for in early stage companies? What is a fair and reasonable amount? I don't take asking for that lightly so it would be great to hear from any companies that have been in this position. What did you offer your first hires? Did they ask for it or did you offer it?

I understand it's a hard one to answer as there's a different value for every startup, but to help value my side of the equation I made a little info page about me

bit.ly/edlea-info

(p.s yes I'm looking :)

I don't put much value in "designers" personally. I'm only interested in people that can do all the front-end work: Javascript/HTML/CSS and graphical elements (logo, UI elements, etc).

A really good one is worth just as much as a good developer in my experience.

Here's a quite broad range: $60k-$120k salary and 0.25% - 2.00% equity (with vesting) in a company that has raised some money. Heavier on salary and lighter on equity as the company progresses.

I agree with you. If a designer can not do the HTML/CSS Stuff you need an extra guy only for that :-)

I see, so you prefer a designer who is also a programmer. Why not get one of your programmers to do the front end programming rather than a designer?

O boy, it's getting frothy when designers are looking for big $ in options... (IMO).

why? I guess it depends on the value you put on design...

Because I can go on 99designs and find a few designers to do work dirt cheap and fast... elance for programming & complicated stuff... not so much. now i'd pay more for someone in house and coming to the office no doubt... but giving up any meaningful % of company to designer, no disrespect, but unlikely... imho.

I'm extremely skeptical. I've not used 99designs, but I've used Freelancer and worked for clients with eLance. This seems to basically just be a design-focused clone of those sites.

A little bit of Google-fu brought me to this: http://www.graphicpush.com/99designs-bullshit-20

I believe it. If you care about the way your product looks or the way people use it, you have to bring in an actual designer onto the project at some point, or you get the ~$3.50 product you bought on the Internet.

I guess I agree with your bigger point, as I really cant envision giving designers too much equity based on what should be the iterative and collaborative design process (unless they're in super-early), but I don't think the alternative is to sacrifice on design quality.

To be honest I didn't read that article - too long. But in real world, having used 99designs several times and finding some designers we use regularly that we discovered there - it works well.

With all due respect, you're evaluating these designers as someone without a good deal of design knowledge (my assumption). The designers you like are creating things for you that apply to your personal taste but may not be "good design", instill trust in your company, increase conversions etc.

All my company does is optimize for conversions and that is what my last company that had 100 people did... I know exactly what works for conversions and split test tons of options. 99designs is fine and people who refuse to acknowledge that fact are doing themselves a disservice.

lol - you downvoted all my posts b/c you're mad - nice.

Man, you are so, so wrong. You should really learn to respect design so much more. You'll get the same quality designers off 99Designs that you will coders off eLance

100% false. Used both. Now all programmers are in-house and 1 designer in-house (part-time), rest of design work outsourced. Not even close to the same comparison.

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