How to evaluate a startup job offer

A startup offer is six things, not one number, and the trap is reading it as a salary with a lottery ticket attached. Evaluate it across six parts: base (what the bank pays you), equity (what you might own), runway (how long the money lasts), team (who you build with), the role itself (what you will actually do), and the manager (who decides if you grow). The offer letter quotes the first two and stays quiet on the other four. The other four usually decide whether the job was worth it.

This post gives you a framework, a weighted checklist, a worked comparison of two offers, and a short list of conditions where the right move is to walk. Most of it you can answer before you ever see a number, by reading the recent raises page and the company's own postings on the board.

The six parts of a startup offer

Take them in order. Base and runway are the floor: if those fail, nothing above them matters. Equity is the upside you are pricing. Team, role, and manager are what you live inside every day, and they are the parts people undervalue at offer time and regret 18 months later.

1. Base salary

Base is the part that is real on day one and the part you can least afford to get wrong, because it sets your savings rate and your floor if the equity goes to zero. Anchor it against the market, not against the founder's first number. A senior engineer in San Francisco or New York in 2026 is generally in the $190,000 to $240,000 base range at a funded startup, with staff levels higher. We break the bands down in senior software engineer salary, SF and NYC 2026.

One rule: do not accept a large base cut in exchange for equity unless you can afford to lose the difference entirely. A $40,000 base cut over three years is $120,000 of real money you handed over for paper that is worth nothing until a liquidity event (illustrative, not advice).

2. Equity

Equity is the reason you are considering a startup at all, and it is the line most likely to be presented in a way that flatters it. Ask for three things in writing: the number of shares or options, the total shares outstanding (so you can compute your percent), and the most recent preferred price per share or 409A valuation. A dollar figure alone ("$300,000 in equity") tells you almost nothing without the strike price and the share count behind it.

Then ask the questions that change the value: the strike price, the vesting schedule, the exercise window if you leave, and whether there is single-trigger or double-trigger acceleration on acquisition. We walk through each in how stock options and vesting work and how much equity by stage.

3. Runway

Runway is how many months the company can pay you before it must raise again, and it is the single most useful number you can extract before signing. A team with 6 months of runway is hiring you into a fundraise you did not agree to join. A team that closed a round recently has bought 18 to 24 months of room, which is why the whole board is sorted by funding recency and why a fresh raise is the best hiring signal.

Ask directly: when did you last raise, how much, and what is current monthly burn. The math is simple. Cash divided by net monthly burn is runway in months. If they raised $8,000,000 and burn $400,000 a month, that is 20 months, assuming burn holds (illustrative, not advice).

4. The team

At a 12-person startup you are not joining a company, you are joining roughly four engineers, and their quality is your daily reality and your reference list for the next decade. Ask who is on the team, how long they have stayed, and why the last person who left, left. Look for tenure: people quietly leaving after 9 months is a louder signal than any pitch deck.

5. The role itself

The title on the offer is the least reliable line in it, because at a startup the same title covers wildly different jobs. "Founding engineer" can mean you own a product surface end to end, or it can mean you are employee number 8 with a nice word in front of your name. Pin down scope: what will you ship in the first 90 days, what do you own alone, and what does success look like at one year. We cover the real version in what a founding engineer actually does.

6. The manager

Your manager decides your scope, your raises, and whether you grow, and at a small company there is no second manager to escape to. If you report to a founder, find out how they handle disagreement and feedback, because you will get a lot of both. The best question to ask: tell me about an engineer who grew here, and one who did not work out and why. A manager who answers both honestly is worth a discount on base.

A weighted checklist for scoring one offer

Score each part 1 to 5, multiply by the weight, and total it. The weights below reflect what actually determines outcomes for most engineers. Adjust them to your own situation: if you have savings and want upside, weight equity higher. If you have a mortgage, weight base and runway higher.

A simple read on the total: above 80 percent is a strong offer worth pushing to close, 60 to 80 percent means negotiate the weak parts before deciding, and under 60 percent means the offer is asking you to carry the risk while the company keeps the upside.

How do you compare two startup offers?

Score both with the same checklist and the same weights, then look at where the gap actually sits. Do not let one loud number (a bigger base, a bigger equity headline) decide it before you have priced the quiet parts. Here are two illustrative offers for the same senior engineer.

Offer A pays $35,000 more in base, and on a one-line comparison it wins. Score it across all six parts and it loses clearly. The 8-month runway means you may be job-searching again inside a year, the first-time manager is a coin flip on your growth, and the smaller equity stake sits behind the same valuation as the bigger one in Offer B. The extra $35,000 of base is real, but it is renting you a riskier year. This is the same logic founders use from the other side, which you can read in how to evaluate a startup job offer's mirror image.

When should you walk away from a startup offer?

Walking is a valid answer, and a few patterns should make it the default rather than the exception. None of these are about the company being bad. They are about the offer asking you to absorb risk the company should be carrying.

• They will not tell you the share count or the last valuation. If you cannot compute your percent, the equity is a number you are meant to feel good about, not one you can value.
• Runway is under 9 months and the raise is 'almost closed'. Almost closed is not closed. You can watch real closes on the recent raises page instead of trusting a timeline.
• A below-market base 'made up in equity' you cannot afford to lose. That is a leveraged bet dressed as a salary.
• The manager or founder dodges the turnover question. People leaving quietly is the loudest signal there is.
• Exploding offer with a 48-hour deadline. A good company wants you to decide well. Pressure this early is a preview of how decisions get made later. We cover this in how to negotiate a startup offer.

The offer letter quotes base and equity. The four lines it leaves out (runway, team, role, manager) usually decide whether the job was worth it.

A short order of operations

1. 01Before the offer: read the company's recent raise and its postings on the board, and write down your market base band.
2. 02At the offer: get share count, total shares, last valuation, strike, vesting, exercise window, runway, and current burn in writing.
3. 03Score it: run the weighted checklist. Below 60 percent, walk or rewrite the offer.
4. 04If you have two: score both with identical weights, then decide on the gap, not the headline.
5. 05Sanity-check the comp: confirm your base against the 2026 SF and NYC bands and the equity against equity by stage.