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Is it reasonable to ask for all the exact equity and salaries of existing founders/employees?
If it's early you definitely want to understand the whole structure of the company. Who is supposed to do what and for how much.
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Is the answer only yes if my compensation is going to be (partly) equity based?
If they are not paying competitive salary you need to know absolutely everything about the arrangement. No exceptions. If they want to keep it for themselves they need to pay competitive salary and maybe give some equity on top.
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Could I get screwed if my equity shares comes out of the employee pool instead of the "rest"?
You could get screwed in many ways if you agree to work mainly for hopes and promises without fully understanding what you are agreeing on.
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Can anyone provide me with a good framework for approaching this?
The most common mistake people make when joining a company at early stage is agreeing to work for equity mainly and ending up doing long hours of work they only get small % from and they take all the risk if things don't work out.
If the company doesn't have any valuable assets/revenue yet then you are basically taking shares in nothing. If you expect to work as much as others then you need to get equal share. If you are not getting equal share they need to pay salary.
If you are taking smaller % than others then you also need to be in position of less risk in case things go wrong. The only way to guarantee that is to be paid ample salary.
You can gather who takes most risk by looking at who is paid first. The order is: salary, creditors, owners.
Last edited by punter11235; 12-13-2018 at 05:38 AM.