What are some guidelines for salary/equity? Would 140k and 2% seem greedy?
That means this company is going to be playing catch up. Instead of using $500,000 to improve an existing prototype or product, or scale a nascent business, the founders here need to use the $500,000 to build a product from scratch and get it to market successfully. If they don't, it is unlikely they will be able to raise a Series A because while the bar for raising seed funding is incredibly low today, the bar for raising a Series A is fairly high and only getting higher.
If you're intent on being this company's first engineering hire, responsible for building the first version of the company's product, you should consider that you are largely going to be responsible for getting the company to the point where it can raise a Series A, which is going to be a low seven-figure amount at a minimum.
In other words, if you deliver, you are going to put these founders in the best position possible to raise millions of dollars at a valuation meaningfully higher than the current valuation. From this perspective, you might want to consider that $140,000 and 2% of the company is not too much but rather too little.
But being an early tech hire is quite appealing, especially if the company takes off. Thanks for the post.
Have great ideas: indecisive and flaky
Chance to be CTO: Yeah right. Become CTO now
2%....too risky and tiny payoff.
Here's what I would do:
149k/year
21 - 32% equity, with linear vesting over 4 years. 6 months and vesting starts until 3.5 years later
28k signing bonus
Don't be a sucker. They will both your worse nightmare.( two dads!)
There's no product, there's no revenue, no prototype. Sounds ridiculous.
They have a pitch deck. However ideas are cheap and some investors are dumb.
Make sure any shares are voting shares and look for the termination clauses and trigger events.
Don't sign any agreement without a lawyer explaining things to you.
Good luck
When I didn't have time to properly date first I just assumed I was the hired gun. In these situations the cash component was high and any equity vesting immediate.
Do you have enough time to flirt/date to get a better handle on how you'd work together as a team?
If you don't want to be a founder, then keep looking.
The salary is too high and the equity too low for a company at that stage.
This can't be usual....
FWIW, their advisors are from a relatively famous California combinator.
28% seems high to me but I don't know their circumstances, be ready swap salary for equity (or vice versa) depending on what they can pay.
But maybe you're right and it's too much.
Either they can meet your compensation requirements, or they can't and you go elsewhere, or you find a compromise if you both want it to work.
If you're a decent engineer who can get things done and out the door to some reasonable professional standard, there are a LOT of elsewheres.