Ask HN: How to negotiate startup salary?
I'm working in a big corp and I just got an offer from a growing startup. The offer is around 2X my current unvested public stocks. What do you think? How can I improve my negotiation skills and negotiate? 1. How does the startup salary compare to your current salary? You need to be more specific: 1. How does the startup salary compare to your current salary? 2a. What is the startup option package as a % of the company? 2b. What is the vesting schedule? 2c. Also --
(i) how big is the startup?
(ii) How much money have they raised?
(iii) Where is it based?
(iv) How much experience do you have? With this information we can give ideas on what comparable companies offer. You have several paths. The best way to negotiate the vested stocks is probably: "Over the next year, if I joined you guys, I would vest $X worth of public stocks. Therefore in order to join I would need a signing bonus of $X in order to compensate me for losing this." Try www.offerletter.io How was your experience with offerletter.io? My package is kind of good already. Will offerletter.io help it push further up?
Can you share what kind of strategies you have applied to negotiate more?
2a. What is the startup option package as a % of the company? It's 15% increase on my current salary.
2b. What is the vesting schedule? 50 Engineers already and company is of size 300. Options % is around 0.026%.
2c. Also -- (i) how big is the startup? (ii) How much money have they raised? (iii) Where is it based? (iv) How much experience do you have? One year cliff and month by month.
They have raised over $50Million and bay area. I have 2.5 years of experience.