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I know that I’m worth more than my equity offer. I want to stay, but is this a sign that I should leave?

We are a growing company and I have been our strongest salesperson by far.  I own our biggest account and am responsible for about half of our business over the last six months.   Our founder is relatively stingy with equity, but his offer way undervalues the dollar amounts that I have delivered, and this is not even counting the myriad of other hats that I wear.  Do I walk?  Do I continue to negotiate?  What’s my next move?

  • Gee, I wonder why he’s stingy? He’s only came up with the concept, started the company, assumed all the risk, he is the liable person there, and if something goes wrong he may lose everything. Not to mention the constant stress, pressure from friends and relatives, having to deal with investors (or with the lack of investors). You? Well, if something goes wrong at most you’ll lose a job.

    I find it that most of the times employees don’t get all the effort and personal stake founders actually put in their companies.

    I get it, you are a good salesman and has brought in business, but I presume you are working on a salary or on commission, or both, so there’s your compensation. As a founder I have given up my salary many times in order to make sure every employee got paid as much as we could pay. If you feel undervalued ask for a raise, or even negotiate how much stock you are getting, but don’t fool yourself by thinking that your employer is greedy and doesn’t want to share the pie, he’s just a guy who probably put a lot of heart and effort into his company, and would like to keep control over it by not oversharing the stocks.

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  • There have been 4 others that have made sales during that time, and I have outsold them 2x, 6x, 10x, and 10x. Sales is far from the only hat that I wear.

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    • Your equity offer could be on par with how much more you’ve sold. Those others might not have been offered anything.

      At the end of the day what do you think would be fair?

      How long have they been around? When did you get involved, time and milestone (pre launch)? Which employee are you?

      On the sales front its not ideal for a sales person to have straight commission but I assume its competitive and, well, you’re getting paid. I don’t know I’d your founders are.

      Reply

  • But you still getting paid well right? As you’re commission only, I’m sure the commission rate is quite competitive. Bottomline, if you’re not a cofounder or the first 1-2 employees (that are unpaid), then you cant have expectations for substantial equity.

    A better discussion to have is salary request in addition to current/adjusted commission rate, and in recognition of additional hats you wear. That said, we all know that everyone in early stage startups wear several hats.

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  • Start a competing company with someone else. You’ll either discover that you were right and that you rightly deserve a bunch of equity – or starting a company is a whole lot harder than just sales.

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  • 99 times out of 100, equity isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. You’re focusing on the wrong thing.

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    • Because 99 of 100 startups have an undesirable ending.

      So why is everyone here doing one then?

      At least the OP is keeping up his hopes…

      Reply

  • Ask him to increase your stake or take your customers and start your own company. If you want more get it for yourself.

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    • Don’t do this. It’s a dick move and high jacking a company is never cool. Not to mention, replicating a company isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds and if yours is that easily copied it’s going to get commoditized anyway.

      Reply

    • That is the sh*t that will get you blacklisted. Imagine doing this and the founder blogs publicly about it: many will refuse to join you and who will ever hire you again after your shady foundation startup predictably fails? Exactly.

      Reply

  • what i have learned is that if you want to own substantial amounts of a company you need to be there from the beginning…invent it…create intellectual property, put in your own money and hit up your friends and family…i don’t think you are going to prevail in this situation primarily because even if the founder is holding onto equity…it may cost that founder a lot of equity for a big round to scale the company.

    i’m sorry but sales is super important…but is not the same as taking risks and being an entrepreneur…

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