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saluki

I would think more about a percentage of the company based on your role and the stage of the company.

Trying to translate 1-10x your salary to equity depends on too many factors.

Talking it over in terms of percentage you'll probably get a bigger piece of the pie.

Keep in mind you're buying a lottery ticket with your reduction in salary.

Think about things like your equity vesting quarterly and over what time period.

Also at what point would your salary go back up to market rate.

Usually equity is to compensate early employees for taking less salary initially, extra effort and expertise, and risking that the startup will fail.

There should be a plan to get you back up to market rate when you are profitable or more profitable.

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Company will IPO in the next 4 years, current salary above market rate, will leave the company right after the IPO to "spend more time with my family". I want to maximise my gain and willing to gamble a few $ off my pay.

So if the company doesn't IPO in four years, and instead slowly staggers into the ground over ten while always promising it'll IPO in a few years, how does that change the terms?

Also, how liquid are these shares? If you can sell at IPO, cool. If you have to hold them for a year watching to see if the share price holds or (somewhat likely) collapses, not so good.

I'd take the salary and buy stock in public companies with it.

thanks for advice!

The good thing about speculating on already-public companies is you have access to a lot of data you probably do not have access to at your current company, and of course, they are already public :)

Not that I'm advising you to speculate on the market... I just buy ETFs lol

Every company thinks they will have a successful exit in a few years. Vanishingly few do. Out of all the companies that YC has funded, how many have IPOd?

I have had friends tell me forecasts like this with complete confidence. Just curious- what industry? What info do you know that convinced you to believe this? Eager to hear whatever you're willing to share.

Look at the last 12 months. Multiple sub-sectors of public equities down >80%. Do you think people saw that coming? If they believed it enough to bet on it, the opportunity to profit was huge. That's to say nothing of private valuations.

And yet every startup with some traction and a proof of concept PMF seems confident an exit is on the horizon. Maybe for parts of the last decade this was true, but now...

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