Origins

In high school I got my first programming job doing web development for an accounting firm. I built a portal for their website that let clients pay their invoices. I loved the work because I loved programming: getting paid to do it was icing on the cake.

I was making $8 an hour there. That’s less than I was making at my other job as a Burger King cashier. I was not a good negotiator.

Job compensation has always bothered me because of how asymmetric is it. Companies not only know the salaries of everyone they employ, but often also at other companies.¹ Individuals know their own salary history, a spattering of unverified data from sites like Glassdoor, and that of a few friends who they’re close enough with to ask.

For startups the problem is even worse: cash is the same between companies, but equity between two companies is often apple to oranges. This hurts both employees and startups. Employees because they don’t realize where they have negotiating leverage, and startups because a lack of understanding often leads to candidates preferring larger, public companies where valuing equity is much simpler.

When I joined Stripe back in 2014 I immediately planned their first recruiting trip to Carnegie Mellon University, my alma matter. These trips are usually accompanied by a tech talk. The company flies out an engineer to talk about the latests and greatest innovations at the company. Pizza is served², t-shirts are handed out, and resumes are collected.

The problem is that students don’t learn much from these talks: they’re a chance for the company to say “hey we’re interesting and innovative, come work for us.” I wanted to be different. I wanted to teach students something useful, even if it didn’t explicitly pitch them on Stripe.

So I put together a talk on startup job offers. I remembered how unclear this crazy thing called “equity” was to me, especially as a new grad. Plus, I’d both given offers at and received offers for a tiny startup, a medium-sized company, and a large company, so I had some breadth on both sides of the table.

The response was better than expected: I was asked to give it again several more times, and I’ve gotten pings from many friends and friends-of-friends asking for advice. It turns out this isn’t just a college grad problem: if you haven’t worked at a startup (and often even if you have) equity is a black box that transforms work into something between all your dreams coming true and absolutely nothing.

After my umpteenth request from a friend-of-friend for advice, I decided to start this site. I hope to do a few things that recording talks wouldn’t let me do:

• Keep the content evergreen: Silicon Valley, startups, and equity changes through trends, laws, and numbers. I’d especially love to touch on number ranges, which change especially quickly with supply/demand.
• Go more in-depth on negotiating, including where smaller startups tend to have leverage.
• Answer questions publicly but anonymously: while some students at my talks have given details about their own situations, many are hesitant to out themselves in front of others, especially if they’re currently at a job they plan to leave.

On the last point, if you have any questions, feedback, or input please drop me a note at hello@startupjoboffers.com. Your personal situation will be kept confidential, and I won’t publish anything about it without your permission.⁴