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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Years ago I took a chance on hiring an engineer fresh out of a software bootcamp. Turned out to be one of the best engineers I have ever worked with - so much tenacity and thirst for learning new things. They went on to join Brex when the company was just starting out. What an awesome exit!

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Hopefully they had the confidence/insight to negotiate properly. I went through BN$ exit (was employee 19) early in my career and unfortunately, only select people at the top got retirement money. The most frustrating part was the Big Co. execs that came in much later, did literally nothing, and got a massive payday. Lesson learned though...

That really sucks. Any advice on how to "negotiate properly" to avoid a situation like this?

whatever they value their options at in negotiations, multiply that by 0.1-0.25 to get the real value in the best outcome for a late stage startup (series B-C+) as a common employee

Without information about the cap table and liquidation preferences, assume the cash you are getting is the only compensation you will receive. To make it easier, if you are not using your lawyer during negotiations, I would assume the cash portion is the only compensation.

Just assume startup equity will be worthless (which it almost always is).

Now I'm wondering if I should've accepted an interview with them. For a while Brex was spamming me with recruiter emails like no other company had done before it.

If it was in the last half decade, your potential stock would be halved with this purchase by C1

yeah, early 2022 if i'm remembering correctly.

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