Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

A few more (not that they'll necessarily tell you, or offer you the job after you get done asking):

6. What percentage of the company are those XX,000 shares you're giving me?

7. What's the current valuation of the company?

8. How much runway do you have left? (Although you can probably infer this pretty easily by when they last raised.)

9. Since you're giving me a YY% haircut on my market-rate salary, what reasons other than the almost certainly worthless, say, 0.25% of the company you're giving me over four years should I be joining you?

10. I don't believe 60-80 hour weeks are productive, sustainable or healthy. What do you think about that?

#6 is super important. It's absolutely crazy that many companies won't tell you this.

#7 is a good question, but don't expect a tangible answer -- unless they just closed a round yesterday, it's truly impossible to say. That said, it's still a great question to ask to see how they value themselves, and what they feel potential acquirers or the public market would value them at.

#9 - I think that's a good question, though might be more diplomatically phrased. ;) (That said, be aware that "market rate" is extremely hard to pin down: for the same reasons you should expect an ambiguous answer to #7, your own "market rate" is similarly ambiguous.)

#10 - Agreed. I target 50, personally.

Re: 9, totally agree on phrasing a little more diplomatically ;)

But even with the ambiguity, I expect the answers would still be enlightening.

I always prefer an explicit answer on financial runway vs. inferring based on the company's last round. That provides a more meaningful picture since there are things you may not be able to piece together during the hiring process (current burn rate, future hiring plans or other significant expense shifts, etc.). E.g. knowing they raised 4 months ago can be deceiving if they only have another 4-6 months of funding left.

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