Moving from a large company to a seed startup

How do you evaluate the risk and the potential of the offer from an early-stage (seed stage done) startup in India? For example (hypothetical), a seasoned leader / founder is starting a new startup in fintech industry (e.g., next zerodha, etc). They raise 10 million USD at 30 million USD post-money valuation. I took fintech as example specifically to ensure it's not only engineers that will be needed from the beginning. * Now, If I were to join as a founding team member (founding engineer for example), what kind of salary, ESOPs one should expect as minimum? * If I were to join after 2-3 engineers are already hired (so not founding engg anymore), what is realistic expectation? * What are some questions I must ask to evaluate if the offer and equity I am being given is good or not. (I know there's probably no way to generalise a "good/bad offer" as that likely depends also on very specific situation of the startup - like what problem is it trying to tackle, and what is the potential of it, etc. So feel free to share your experience as well if not advice)

My current comp is around 45lpa and 30lpa in stocks. A seed stage startup is offering me 30lpa in cash and 25lpa in stocks. I really feel that this startup can go places. Any advise?

I am working in a Pre Seed GenAI Startup (2020 Founded) as Head of Engineering (Team of 20 with 5-6 in Engineering, No CTO) It's been 3.5 years (3yrs Full Time + 6mon Internship) Previously it is in EdTech now in GenAI Space My CTC is 8 LPA + 0.45% ESOPs (10-12L in 25cr valuation). Skills: Nodejs, Nextjs, Monorepos, MongoDB, AWS, Serverless 1-2yrs ago we were thinking about scaling the tech team, etc but then that EdTech model started failing and then we went to a war time after that we pivoted currently also we are burning money revenue is there but very less (25% of the expense) I was of the view that I want to lead teams and scale products That's why I was there in the team It can be the case tomorrow if we scale but Now I am confused whether I should switch my job and or stick with the startup maybe the startup grow tomorrow or a big VC fund us to scale (as I have ESOPs) or it will just be a waste of time or opportunity cost Please guide 🙏 Anyone with a similar startup experience would really appreciate your help 🙏

which one would be better to join and how to evaluate: fairly old startup (~10 years) with extremely competent folks (Top IITs) VS 2 year old startup in Seed Stage with friendly team but team size <10 getting similar comp but much higher stocks in the seed stage. extremely confused because I think it’ll be similar work life balance in both. don’t know if it’s right time to take risk so early in my career (my YOE: <1) I also think the work might be hectic in the first than the second. learning curve might be more in the first. from another standpoint, the first company is much more well recognised and more "stable" also- for folks who have been in the job for a while, how important would it be to stay close to your home eventually? do you feel lonely in cities away from home? sometimes I feel I should go for stability and other time I feel it’ll be fine at max the early startup will give me atleast one year experience so very confused

Im currently working at McKinsey and want to understand if working at a startup in a strategy.growth role is better. What are the factors i should be thinking about before making the switch?

Have received an offer from a start up of about 50 people, recently got funded. My current role is APM , from past almost 2 years and while it's not perfect, Its reasonably okay. What considerations should be taken before deciding to make the switch?

Switching careers. Currently a fresher in IT. 24M. I am unable to choose a company to apply for due to its reviews in AmbitionBox, Glassdoor etc. Even if a company has 4+ out of a 5 in overall review, I am skeptical about it because of the few VERY negative reviews it has. Can somebody please help me with this confusion? How do I choose a company? I don't want to work for a very large company like something that has more than 5000 employees. I am ok with working at a seed startup that less than 10 employees too. But, I am seriously concerned about the team culture, salary and growth.

The title speaks for itself. As a fresher, should I focus only on developing my experience or should I care about funding, number of employees and all that stuff? By the way this startup is a part of YC.

What questions would you ask to evaluate if you should join an early stage startup in this market? The objective is to ensure job longevity, avoid getting laid off and experience a reasonable amount of growth. Is there anything else that we can do apart from asking questions to the company folks?

Hello grapevines! Need your help/opinion here. I work for a big corp. ~6YOE. 48L. The work culture here seems a bit off. Constant pressure to compete and snatch the work and prove oneself. Chaos is being glorified. Onsite team is unresponsive and hiding information. Asking for a KT is being judged upon(expectation is apparently to read through the code). Everyone is trying to earn brownie points by impressing the manage because no one seems to know what to work upon. Technical ability is being looked down upon in the name of domain knowledge. I switched recently to upskill and grow, but seems like it was a wrong choice. I’m looking for early stage startups to switch to. I know the current market situation is bad, but I’d take the risk as long as I’m getting to expose myself to good problem statements and less bullshit.