Voting Time! If you're joining an early stage tech company today in India as a full time employee would you prefer - 1. All cash compensation + yearly bonus 2. Balanced Cash + Small Equity 3. Low cash comp + Higher Equity Vote with reactions below. Feel free to comment with your reasoning and/or additional thoughts.

All cash with an option to buy stocks or trade in once I have belief in your vision / product. At the interview / hiring stage it is too premature to know if the ship is going anywhere - idea may be great but founders may be out of depth or vice versa.

@loud-glass-33663 You want your cake & eat it too 😀

Really? I thought that is a fair assessment. Unless ofcourse I am joining at a co-founder level and not a employee. Then things are different. I have been on both sides of the table and I think it is unfair to ask employees to trade in salary for stock when 90% of the companies fail and the employees don’t have a say in most things that founders decide on. I own a fair bit of equity in startups which have received investment from the likes of YC, Khosla, etc — but in the end 10% of 0 is 0 😀

I agree with Saurabh, with the exception that the employee may not want/not be allowed to buy equity later either (and that is fine, if that is what the founders choose). I understand the sentiment, that the founders prefer that employees have skin in the game or be a part of the 'family', but if the employee were to put on an investor's hat, they may not be interested in equities or are interested in doing their due diligence in the organisation before they invest, so the interview stage is too early or opaque point to make a decision on whether they would invest.

I agree with both of you. Interview time is just too early to decide if you really want to be invested in this company. From practical standpoint, I don't how one would structure this (or haven't heard of a company who does this). Something like - full cash comp until cliff and then at cliff if you decide to exercise the stock options then your cash comp goes down or something?

@brief-scooter-54095 yep - that sounds like a great option which I would take you up on. Most companies either offer / coerce new joinees to pick up some ESOPs who then either just take it because they are desperate for a job anyways — or feel it might be rude to not take it. The keyword here being “early-stage”

If Indian startup then 1, otherwise 2.

option 2, in case you really believe in the founders and the vision, +1 on this and possibly double down on it, if the founder are seasoned and have already exited/sold on their last startups

How did you guys decide upon this? For a person applying to a startup, doesn't it depend on the product and cofounders (as in vision, or expertise or character if thats a thing! Etc) ? And probably what stage of career are you in! Like in third year of graduation I opted for option 3, for two different startups, both failed, I didn't earn but learnt a lot. Right now I wouldn't go for 2 or 3 unless I know the founders personally or have been successful before.

context matters, there's no right answer here @creamy-tiger-4573