"Divide their annual recurring revenue by the total headcount. If that number is below $150K, the company is either pre–product market fit or scaling too early."
Most of the time, if you are a technical person joining a company that already has revenue, you are probably already too late for a significant equity stake. And if a company already has $300k of revenue per employee, I'd have trouble calling it a "start-up". Just my experience - I am sure there are exceptions.
Some of the other advice is good - finding out how many shares are outstanding and the current valuation is the info you need to judge what the shares in your offer might be worth. I agree that if the company is evasive on this info, it is a red flag.
Start-ups are risky - but if it doesn't work out, move on. It isn't the end of your career.
I think around twenty years ago or so I was getting contacted by recruiters so much - like daily - that I decided to hide my LinkedIn account. I logged in but there was no option to make me invisible. So I decided to just delete the account but at that time there was no option to delete your account. I tried to contact them to be deleted but no response.
So I changed all of my content. I said I worked at a hot dog stand named hot hot hot and my speciality was hot dogs and a bunch of other bs.
For years after I would go to parties in sf and someone would ask me for my LinkedIn contact and I'd explain the situation. Some people would exclaim 'you're the hot hot hot guy?!'
I changed the email address on the account to something fake so I was never able to recover it but I think it's finally gone.
I later had a xing account and they refused to delete it when I asked them to, so I just changed all of the content to me complaining about xing not deleting my account. They deleted not long after.
"Divide their annual recurring revenue by the total headcount. If that number is below $150K, the company is either pre–product market fit or scaling too early."
Most of the time, if you are a technical person joining a company that already has revenue, you are probably already too late for a significant equity stake. And if a company already has $300k of revenue per employee, I'd have trouble calling it a "start-up". Just my experience - I am sure there are exceptions.
Some of the other advice is good - finding out how many shares are outstanding and the current valuation is the info you need to judge what the shares in your offer might be worth. I agree that if the company is evasive on this info, it is a red flag.
Start-ups are risky - but if it doesn't work out, move on. It isn't the end of your career.
I think around twenty years ago or so I was getting contacted by recruiters so much - like daily - that I decided to hide my LinkedIn account. I logged in but there was no option to make me invisible. So I decided to just delete the account but at that time there was no option to delete your account. I tried to contact them to be deleted but no response.
So I changed all of my content. I said I worked at a hot dog stand named hot hot hot and my speciality was hot dogs and a bunch of other bs.
For years after I would go to parties in sf and someone would ask me for my LinkedIn contact and I'd explain the situation. Some people would exclaim 'you're the hot hot hot guy?!'
I changed the email address on the account to something fake so I was never able to recover it but I think it's finally gone.
I later had a xing account and they refused to delete it when I asked them to, so I just changed all of the content to me complaining about xing not deleting my account. They deleted not long after.
I guess I don't do well with resume sites.
> I have seen people join for equity only to discover they were last in line on the cap table.
As an engineer, you always will be last. And there are a lot of ways you can be _legally_ screwed.