Resources
Guides, tools, and answers for founders and early hires.
Guides
- Understanding vesting and cliffsVesting is how you earn your equity over time. The most common startup schedule is four years with a one-year cliff: nothing vests in your first year, 25% vests on your first anniversary, and the rest vests monthly over the next three years. What you keep if you leave depends on what has vested and, for stock options, whether you buy them in time.
- Founding employee vs co-founder: ownership, risk and questions to askA founding employee joins early to build a meaningful part of a company. A co-founder helps establish and lead the company itself. Compare the responsibility, decision-making authority, compensation and ownership rights in the actual offer, not just the title.
- How to write a founding role job descriptionAn effective founding role job description is not a corporate template. It should lead with mission and scope, be transparent about stage and compensation, and clearly describe the team, culture, and next steps so the right candidates can self-select.
- How to negotiate founding team compensationNegotiate startup compensation by understanding the stage and tradeoff between cash and equity. Earlier stage means more equity and lower cash. Be clear on equity terms, vesting, and role scope. Most startups have flexibility on equity but fixed cash budgets.
- What to look for in your first 10 hiresYour first 10 hires define company culture and set the foundation for growth. Look for generalists over specialists, people who are comfortable with ambiguity, and those who can scale alongside the company. Avoid hiring too deep too early.
- How to evaluate equity offersEvaluate equity offers by understanding the stage, option pool size, and your ownership percentage. Ask about the 409A valuation, liquidation preferences, and vesting schedule. More equity at an earlier stage means more risk but higher potential upside.
- What to look for in a startup before joiningBefore joining a startup, evaluate the founders' track record, product-market fit signals, funding status, and team dynamics. Look for clarity on role expectations, equity terms, and growth potential. Talk to current and former employees.
- Red flags when evaluating founding rolesRed flags include unclear equity terms, no vesting, founders with poor track records, unclear product direction, and toxic culture. Also watch for unrealistic expectations, poor communication, and misaligned incentives. Trust your instincts.
- How to hire a founding engineerHiring a founding engineer requires evaluating technical skills, cultural fit, and equity expectations differently than later hires. Look for full-stack capability, ownership mentality, and comfort with ambiguity. The best candidates have built Side projects, contributed to open source, or started their own projects.
- How to structure founding team equityFounding team equity should be structured with 4-year vesting and a 1-year cliff. Co-founders typically receive 10-40% each, with the CEO often having a controlling stake. Early hires receive meaningful equity (0.5-3%) to align incentives with company success.
Tools & resources
- Equity Offer Questions ChecklistMark which equity terms the employer has documented, explained verbally, or left unanswered. Copy a focused list of questions to clarify the actual grant before comparing scenarios.
- Startup and Founding-Role Due-Diligence ChecklistEvaluate a startup, the founders, the role, cash compensation, and equity before you join. This worksheet helps you separate confirmed evidence from claims, assumptions, and unanswered questions without pretending to predict which startup will succeed.
- Startup Equity Comparison TemplateA simple template to compare equity offers across different startups. Normalize for stage, valuation, and vesting terms.
Answers
- What is a founding engineer?A founding engineer is one of the first engineers a startup hires, usually before there is an engineering team, who builds the first versions of the product with the founders. The job covers whatever the product needs, from choosing the technology and writing most of the early code to talking with customers and helping hire the engineers who come next. Founding engineers are early employees, not co-founders: they join after the company is formed and usually receive an equity grant that vests over time.
- What is a founding GTM role?A founding GTM hire is a startup's first go-to-market person: the one who turns founder-led sales into a repeatable way to find, win and keep customers. GTM stands for go-to-market. The job covers whatever the company needs most, from sales and marketing to partnerships and revenue operations, and you build it without a team, a playbook or a big budget.
- How much equity to ask for in a founding roleAsk for a grant in line with how early you’re joining and how much you’ll own. Carta’s data puts the median grant for a startup’s first hire at about 1.5% of the company, falling to about a third of a percent by the fifth hire. A percentage alone doesn’t tell you what a grant is worth, so confirm the share count, strike price and vesting before you compare offers.
- What equity should a founding designer get?FoundingHunt's benchmark puts founding designers at 0.3% to 1.5% at pre-seed, 0.15% to 0.75% at seed, 0.05% to 0.3% at Series A and 0.02% to 0.15% at Series B. Where you land depends mostly on how early you join and how much of product, brand and research you own. Design hires usually sit a little below founding engineers at the same stage.
- How much does a founding sales hire make?Founding sales hires typically earn $90K-$150K base salary plus commission, with total on-target earnings (OTE) of $150K-$250K depending on stage, deal size, and location. FoundingHunt's equity benchmark for founding sales hires is 0.25% to 1% at pre-seed and 0.1% to 0.5% at seed. Sales compensation is more heavily weighted toward variable pay (commission) than other founding roles.
- What is the difference between a founding engineer and a senior engineer?A founding engineer makes foundational technical decisions with minimal oversight, defines engineering culture, and works with extreme product ambiguity, typically as one of the first 5-10 employees. Senior engineers at established companies work within existing systems, follow established architecture patterns, and have clear requirements and processes. Founding engineers usually receive much more equity but face higher execution risk. FoundingHunt's benchmark puts founding engineer equity at 0.5% to 2% at pre-seed and 0.25% to 1% at seed: an estimate, not an employer offer.
- What does a chief of staff do at a startup?A chief of staff at a startup works directly with the CEO or founding team on the company's highest-priority projects, acting as a force multiplier across strategy, operations, communications, and execution. The role is highly context-dependent and typically involves board preparation, fundraising support, key hires, strategic initiatives, and anything requiring high-context decision-making. Chief of staff roles emerge post-Series A when founders need leverage on execution and coordination.
- Is a founding role worth it?Founding roles are worth it for people who value equity upside, learning velocity, and influence over stable compensation and established processes. The median outcome is lower total comp than big tech, but the upside (successful exit) can be life-changing. Founding roles make sense for people early in their career seeking accelerated learning, or experienced professionals who've optimized for cash comp at larger companies and want ownership and impact.