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by preseedthrwwy 1731 days ago
throwaway for obvious reasons..

I joined a seed company w/ a $10m valuation in early 2014, starting offer was 1%. after series a, b, c, and some smaller retention grants, I had about 0.4%. Left before fully vesting, so ended up with 0.3%. Company was acquired for $4b and I made $12m. After taxes, netted about $7.5m

Joined another seed company with $10m valuation in 2016, starting offer was 3%. after a few dilutive funding rounds and some generous retention grants, ended up with 1.2%. Company also acquired for $4b and I made $50m. Will probably have about $35m from this one after tax.

Obviously I was _incredibly_ lucky in picking those two companies, but maybe those numbers shed some light on dilution, taxes, etc. I wouldn't have made anywhere near that much if I'd joined those companies after series a, let alone b or c. I encourage anyone I know who wants to make 7 figures to work for faang for a few years. If they want to make 8 figures, start a company or join as the very first hire (as I did) if you're not willing to take the risk of being a founder.

4 comments

This is a good 'best-case' example that anyone could hope for, and like you say - you probably need to be one of first few engineering hires to have a shot at this type of outcome.
Yea I think this is a top 0.1% survivorship bias. Hitting 2 startup lotteries in a row at that kind of exit. Kudos.
I bet this goes the other way, especially at the exec level. That is, the best indicator of startup success is past startup success. Certainly funding is easier, building the team is easier, and the emotional decision making is easier.

The phrase serial entrepreneur is often used.

Shouldn't be this more like 0.01%? Two startups as an early employee and hitting almost 50M. Wow. just wow.
The problem with your assumption is that you think everyone is equally poorly skilled in choosing startups to join.
absolutely agree - wasn't trying to give the indication that I think my situation is a likely outcome
And it's not 100% luck neither, as one of the first employee you probably participated to the success of those companies! Kudos to you!
What is next for you?!
Wow! What companies do you like right now ;)
Thanks for sharing your counter-example.

Do you think you significantly affected company trajectory in these two cases or not? Can play around with the definition of “significantly here”.

May I ask if you had some non-startup years of experience before joining this seed company?