Raising a seed round

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)

I am an ex founder, recently left my company. I don’t seem to have the courage to start again and don’t feel like have any skills . I’ve been consulting some startups on fundraise, should I try building an investment banking company ? I don’t know if that is what I want to do.

Hi everyone, I joined a startup back in May which started in May itself. I wrote the first line of code and it has been the backend work since then and have hired a few interns along the way. I took some pay cut to join this startup and i didn't receive any share/ESOPs as well in my offer letter. but whenever i talk to my friends who have worked or are working in these types of companies, ask me to ask for the ESOPs/equity from my founder. I did talk about equity/ESOPs before accepting my offer letter but that time, they said, you will be issued ESOPs later on when we raise some funding. We will make some ESOPs plan when we raise funding. I know that our company has only raised friends and family round of amount near to 1cr. Now I need advice on.. should i bring up this conversation again with the company's founder ? And how much percentage of equity should I be asking..? given that I am giving my 101% daily and leading the backend team.. although i have industry experience of only 3 years but have good academic achievements and has completed graduation in computer science in tier-1 college.

I want to find seed stage startups to join as a founding engineer. I want to take some risk while I can and try if I can get a good return. How should I go about this? I have 7 years of experience. Building distributed systems, backend services with Go, Clojure, etc. I have some frontend experience as well with SvelteKit, Tailwind, etc. I also made a SaaS product recently and got around 10 small businesses as customers on subscription. The product itself got acquired for 5 figures USD after I ran it for 2 months

Hello! As someone who works with startups (not in)and has a well paying job, I am often intrigued and keen to invest money (say a few lacs, and provide some mentorship) as a micro angel investor in early age pre series/ seed rounds, to try my hand. Not talking about becoming a LP or joining a VC/PE. (I know the pros and cos, the glamour and the ugly pieces) . While there are some fintech startups where you can invest as low as 5000/- in a startup, I believe these aren’t for me. Any guidance on how I begin. (Apart from- go out there and network with startup founders and events) ?

Hello! As someone who works with startups (not in)and has a well paying job, I am often intrigued and keen to invest money (say a few lacs, and provide some mentorship) as a micro angel investor in early age pre series/ seed rounds, to try my hand. Not talking about becoming a LP or joining a VC/PE. (I know the pros and cos, the glamour and the ugly pieces) . While there are some fintech startups where you can invest as low as 5000/- in a startup, I believe these aren’t for me. Any guidance on how I begin and any learnings? P.s have posted under finance section too. But thought might get some guidance here too!

So, I am an analytics guy with almost 5.5 YoE under my belt. My latest transition was to Phonepe that I made this year (feeling shitty here already, given the kind of work creating almost no impact) I saw a post on LinkedIn where the CEO of this startup recently raised some pre-seed funding (~1.5mn). Since I was following them for almost 6-7 months before this, I reached out to the founder on LinkedIn. We first had a virtual call where we got to know each other and after that discussion, he called me over to his place where we further talked about the idea, the scope and the future while also discussing what I could bring to the table. Post that, we met again, and this time with the other co-founder who deep-dived a slight bit into the tech stack that I had worked on. It seems that all is going well, but the founder, in the first face to face meeting told me that for the time being (for almost the next 3-4 months), he'll be able to pay me a monthly amount which is less than half of my current in hand pay, post which it'll be reviewed and adjusted accordingly. How do I negotiate this now? Also, since the team size is super small (only 5 full time folks and one customer support part timer), how do I negotiate on what equity I take (looking for a benchmark number here)?

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.

I have 6 years experience. My current base/fixed is 60 LPA. (I also got a 5 lakh bonus and 5 lakh of my ESOPs vested this year making my total vested about 30 lakh. So the total comp is 70). I'm being offered a senior engineer position in an early stage startup (as part of the founding engineer team). They haven't given an offer yet. Being early stage, the emphasis will most likely be on ESOPs. How do I evaluate this and set my expectations? (If I were to switch to a mature company, I believe the hikes usually are between 15-20%? How does this work for early stage startups?)

I’m currently hiring for a financial analyst position for my startup. They’ll be the first core employee. I’m looking for a person with an experience of 2-3 years. The capabilities that I’m looking forward in them are REFM (Real Estate financial modelling), financial analysis, calculation of ROI implications and understanding metrics suck as IRR, XIRR, CAGR etc for Real Estate Investments and Risk Management. Currently we’re developing the technology and were commuted for Pre-Seed investment. So the role would also require to fulfil cross functional tasks. How much Base pay and equity/ ESOPs should I be considering?