Startup Resources: Equity and Stock
How does equity work? How much are your stock options worth? Use these resources to figure it out. See the "Getting a Job at a Startup" chapter in Part III, Teams for more info.
These startup resources are based on the book Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams by Yevgeniy Brikman. These resources are a work in a progress. They are also open source, so you can add your contributions by submitting a pull request to the Hello, Startup GitHub Repository. To see how these resources fit into the bigger picture, check out the The Startup Checklist, which is a comprehensive collection of everything you need to do to launch a startup.
Equity Calculator
How much are your stock options worth? Is it worth taking a lower salary for them? This calculator can help you answer that question. Note: this is no more than a very rough estimate. It doesn't take into account taxes, vesting, and dilution, and you have to guess at a lot of the numbers, so it's only useful to get a ballpark figure. Also, bear in mind that roughly 3 out of 4 startups fail, so in many cases, the stock is worth nothing. See the "Getting a Job at a Startup" chapter in Hello, Startup and the further reading section below for more info.
Equity Tables
These tables show how much equity the average startup employee gets, depending on when they join the company and their position.
From Joe Stump:
| Employee | Equity |
|---|---|
| First non-founding engineer | 1-3% |
| Early engineers | 0.5 - 1.5% |
| Director | 1% |
| VP | 2 - 3% |
| CEO | 6 - 9% |
From Venture Hacks:
| Employee | Equity |
|---|---|
| CEO | 5 - 10% |
| COO | 2 - 5% |
| VP | 1 - 2% |
| Independent Board Member | 1% |
| Director | 0.4 - 1.25% |
| Lead Engineer | 0.5 - 1% |
| 5+ years experience Engineer | 0.33 - 0.66% |
| Manager or Junior Engineer | 0.2 - 0.33% |
From Leo Polovets:
| Employee | Equity |
|---|---|
| Hire #1 | 2 - 3% |
| Hire #2-5 | 1 - 2% |
| Hire #6-7 | 0.5 - 1% |
| Hire #8-14 | 0.4 - 0.8% |
| Hire #15-19 | 0.3 - 0.7% |
| Hire #21-27 | 0.25 - 0.6% |
| Hire #28-34 | 0.25 - 0.5% |
Splitting Equity Between Founders
Legal and Accounting Basics for Startups
http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/"In the top YC companies, which we call those with the highest valuations, there are zero instances where the founders have a significantly disproportionate equity split."
Further Reading
