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Comment by undefined3840 | Hacker News Reader

I see it on HN all the time. People are literally telling others to assume their equity grant is $0. People are even saying this of private late stage startups that issue RSUs.

If you want to make a gambling analogy, I’d say making money off your equity grant at an early stage company is more like playing Roulette (with a better payout) than buying a lottery ticket. Sure, it’s uncommon to win (in this case hit your number) but it happens with decent frequency.

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I don't read it as saying it's literally worthless. Large payouts happen rarely enough that if you want what most people want, you should make the decision for reasons other than maximizing your worth. Assume it's $0 for decision making purposes, and be pleasantly surprised if it isn't. (read literally, this would be an oxymoron)

For some reason changing the analogy from a lottery ticket to a roulette game does not actually make me think it is reasonable to take equity instead of cold hard cash.

Perhaps it was my gambling addicted stepfather who died broke that keeps from seeing the appeal.

If you’re joining an early stage venture backed startup and demanding only a salary and no equity, you’ll feel much worse if your startup finds any reasonable level of success because you demanded 20k more a year in salary over something that could be much more than that.

You’re not risking your life savings by joining a venture backed startup as an employee. In the worst case you write off a few thousand dollars you spent exercising some options while making a market rate salary (because you negotiated).

> If you’re joining an early stage venture backed startup and demanding only a salary and no equity, you’ll feel much worse

... because no startup is willing to pay competitive total comp fully in salary. Bigcos mostly aren't either, FWIW, although RSUs of a public company have a lot more liquidity and lower volatility than startup options.

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