Startups as a Career and Transparency on Equity Grants. Posted on: July 28, 2013Posted in Career Generally speaking, there’s a major lack of transparency around startup equity in the tech world. Often the people who can write about options and salary are VCs / founders who feel they are too dirty to share or can’t properly obscure individuals and stories. It feels like most conversations about equity and pay stay between friends in back rooms.
Recently AngelList Talent added some transparency with their recruiting tools, which is nice to see, but many jobs have a very nebulous equity range (e.g. 0.0 – 2%). Here’s a basis for how equity is commonly granted to employees in early startups: Expect from 0.1% to 1% of a company in a bell curve distribution for joining a seed or series A funded startup. There are outlying data points on both extremes.I often hear reports of MBA types asking for way too much equity. One really interesting career-related pattern comes out of all this: The obvious calculation here is time. Manage Your Tech Career. It may sound strange for the CEO of an investment management firm to say this, but managing your career well is much more important than managing your investments well. Good investment management – using low-cost ETFs and low-fee advice – can mean higher returns in your investment portfolio.
Over time, that might add up a lot of money, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars on larger portfolios. But the economic rewards that follow from good career decisions in the technology industry are potentially much larger. Today, Wealthfront is launching a Startup Compensation Tool to help our clients with that part of their financial lives: their careers. We’ve licensed data typically used by human resources departments and made it available for free – one more example of how Wealthfront is democratizing access to sophisticated financial advice and information. I’m not suggesting money should be your first concern when you think about your career. How To Use The Tool Find The Right Company (Or Pie)