I think it's meaningless.<p>Employees with "equity" options will:<p>1. Get diluted with every VC round (oh, but value of our company is increased so you potentially own more in dollars!)<p>2. Left in a dark about preferred shares schedules and conditions that every VC gets. Preferred shares allows VC's to get paid first and in multiples of their original investments in case of an exit. This effectively can and most often will leave exactly $0 for employees with every exit regardless is employee owns 1% 5% or 25% of options.<p>Upon hiring - request disclosure of preferred shares schedules - before and during employment - and you'll quickly be given some excuse or shown the door if you insist.<p>If you're lucky and given equity right before IPO or given RSU (actual shares with vesting schedule) of publicly traded company - then it could make a world of difference.
None at first. I was hired by a client after the dev shop I worked for went under. We were so inexperienced/grateful for the job we didn’t think to ask for any equity. The salary is just below market average, which is fair considering my experience level.
Some background: this is my first startup, we’re a team of 5 (CEO, Android, iOS, Web/CTO, Customer support).<p>6 months after we were hired the runway began to get tight and we had to take some semi-drastic measures to stretch it: the CEO (who hadn’t been taking a salary for quite some time) asked us to stay on but work half-time until we were far enough along to raise the correct amount of funding. Because I believe in both the mission and the CEO I offered to stay on full-time for half-pay and half-equity. For the past 5 months half of my salary has been converted into shares. Instant vesting, shares are being given at our current valuation. Each month translates to roughly 0.1% of the company.
1.6%, third hire. Now the company is at series C, 4 years later. Significant dilution as expected (own roughly 0.5%), but clean terms for all rounds (liquidation preference 1X, non participating).
Employee number 4 at a very small startup in the bay area. 1% equity slightly after seed. I have been at a few startups which are more commonly .1 - .5%. I was very appreciative of the amount and hope it will pay off in the long run.
Years ago, I was around employee number ten in a database software startup. When the company was sold, my shares were worth about $2000.<p>(Yeah, that was my last startup.)