Working at a startup
A job at a company that is still finding out what it is. You are paid in a salary and in a lottery ticket, and the salary is the part you can plan around.
The decision
Whether to take a job at a company that may not exist in three years, in return for breadth, speed and a chance of equity.
The risk
The company fails or the equity pays nothing, and the years were paid at whatever the salary was.
The roles
There is no standard graduate scheme, so the roles are named for the gap they fill. The same job can be called operations, strategy or growth at two companies, and the stage decides more than the title does. At seed the whole team fits round a table and every hire does several jobs. By the growth stage there are several hundred people and the roles have begun to specialise.
The roles finance and consulting candidates are hired into
| Role | What it is | How people get it | Where it leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder’s associate | Works for the founder on whatever is most urgent, from hiring to the investor update. | Directly, often after a first job or an internship at the company. | Chief of staff, operations, product, or founding something. |
| Analyst at a venture-backed company | Strategy, growth or data analysis. The models are simpler than banking’s and the results arrive faster. | Directly at growth-stage companies, or after banking or consulting. | BizOps, product management, venture capital. |
| Finance and operations | Often the first finance hire: bookkeeping that becomes budgeting, then the board pack and the fundraising model. | Through audit, FP&A or a graduate role at a funded company, usually found through the founder. | Head of finance, FP&A, corporate development. |
| Chief of staff | Runs an executive’s priorities, planning cycle and cross-team projects. The title has no fixed content. | After two to four years of consulting, banking or an operating role. | General management, venture capital, founding a company. |
| Head of finance | Owns the numbers the board and investors rely on, and the model behind each funding round. | Promotion from the first finance hire, or a hire from banking, audit or FP&A. | Chief financial officer, corporate development. |
How hiring works
A startup hires when something is breaking, so it hires quickly and on evidence. The decision is usually made by a founder or the head of the function, not by a recruitment team, and the process is often a conversation, a piece of work and a second conversation, over two to three weeks. The piece of work is the part to prepare for: a short model, a memo on a decision the company faces, or an analysis of a metric.
- Ownership. Evidence that you took something from vague to finished without being told how.
- Written clarity. A founder reads a memo faster than they sit through a presentation, so a one-page argument is worth more than a polished deck.
- Appetite for the unglamorous. The same person may build the model, chase an invoice and onboard the next hire.
- Structure. Banking and consulting candidates are hired for it, and are tested on whether they can work without a team of analysts behind them.
Many roles are never advertised. The routes in are the company’s own careers page, the talent pages that venture funds keep for their portfolios, and a direct message to the person who would be your manager with a specific observation about the product. A fast way to find companies hiring is a funding announcement: a company that has just raised is, almost by definition, about to hire.
The cash reality
In our judgement, the offer that matters is the cash. Early-stage salaries are often set below what an established employer pays for the same role, and the equity is offered to make up the gap. That is a trade, and the sound way to weigh it is to compare the salary alone with the alternative, treat the equity as a bonus with no promised value, and ask whether you could live on the salary for as long as you plan to stay.
- How many months of cash does the company hold at its current spending, and when did the last round close?
- Is the salary paid from money already in the bank, or from a round that has not closed?
- What is the notice period on each side, and is there a bonus or only salary?
- What benefits does the offer include that the alternative would have provided?
A company’s runway is its cash divided by its monthly net spending. It is the single most useful number in the first conversation, and a founder who cannot say it is telling you something about the company.
Equity as pay, with the arithmetic shown once
Equity in a startup usually means options: the right to buy shares at a fixed strike price once they have vested. Everything below is an illustration with invented numbers, chosen to be easy to follow. It is not a forecast for any company.
One grant, from offer to sale
- The grant
- 20,000 options at a strike price of $1.00. The company has 10,000,000 fully diluted shares, so the grant is 20,000 / 10,000,000 = 0.20%.
- Vesting
- Four years with a one-year cliff. Nothing vests before month 12. At month 12, 25% vests: 5,000 options. After that 1/48 of the grant vests each month, which is 416.67 options. All 20,000 are vested at month 48.
- Dilution
- Two later funding rounds each sell 20% of the company to new investors. Your share of the company is multiplied by 0.8 twice: 0.20% x 0.8 x 0.8 = 0.128%.
- A sale at $200m
- Ignoring investors’ preferences, 0.128% of $200m is $256,000. Shares outstanding are 10,000,000 / 0.64 = 15,625,000, so each is worth $200m / 15,625,000 = $12.80. Buying 20,000 shares at $1.00 costs $20,000, so the gain before tax is $256,000 - $20,000 = $236,000.
- A sale at $30m
- If investors hold $40m of 1x non-participating preferred stock, they take the whole $30m instead of converting, and the options are worth nothing. The price of the sale decides everything, and below the money invested it can decide nothing is left.
- Leaving after 24 months
- The 10,000 vested options (5,000 at the cliff plus 12 x 416.67) cost $10,000 to exercise. If the shares are then valued at $3.00, the spread of $2.00 on 10,000 shares is $20,000. Where that spread is taxed as income on exercise, a 30% rate is $6,000 more, so keeping the equity needs $16,000 in cash, usually within about 90 days, for shares that cannot yet be sold.
Tax rates, treatment and the length of the exercise window differ by country and by option type. The 30% above is an assumption for the arithmetic, not a rate that applies to anyone.
Read as a table
| Month | Options vested, of 20,000 |
|---|---|
| Before 12 | 0 |
| 12, the cliff | 5,000 |
| 24 | 10,000 |
| 48 | 20,000 |
What to ask for before accepting equity
| Ask for | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The number of options and the fully diluted share count | A number of options means nothing without the total beside it. 20,000 of ten million is 0.2%; 20,000 of two hundred million is 0.01%. |
| The strike price | It sets the cost to exercise and how much of any gain you keep. It is lower for an option granted before a large round than after. |
| The vesting schedule and the cliff | Leave in month 11 and nothing has vested. |
| The exercise window after you leave | Ninety days is a common default, and it turns a departure into a cash decision. |
| The investors’ preferences | Preferred stock is paid before common stock, so the sale price at which employees start to receive anything can be well above zero. |
| The most recent independent valuation of the common stock | It is what the strike was set from, and the common is valued below the price investors paid. |
Rules differ by country
In the United Kingdom, Enterprise Management Incentives are a tax-advantaged option scheme for employees of smaller companies. GOV.UK sets the conditions at gross assets of £120 million or less, fewer than 500 full-time employees, and options worth up to £250,000 per employee in a three-year period. With an option price at no less than market value at grant there is no income tax or National Insurance on exercise, and capital gains tax may apply on sale. In the United States, the IRS describes incentive stock options as generally giving no income at grant or exercise, with possible alternative minimum tax on exercise, and non-statutory options as taxed on exercise on the difference between value and price paid. Confirm the treatment of your own grant with a tax adviser.
Assessing a startup from its filings and funding
A private company tells you very little by law, so the work is in assembling what it does disclose. None of this replaces asking the company directly, and a company that answers the questions below readily is showing you something too.
What to look at and what it tells you
| Question | Where to look | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| How much has it raised, and from whom? | Funding announcements. In the United States, Form D filings on SEC EDGAR, which must be filed within 15 days of the first sale in a private offering and report the amount offered and sold. | The scale of the cash behind the company, and whether investors have returned. Investor quality is a signal and not a guarantee. |
| What shares have been issued, and at what price? | In the United Kingdom, Companies House filings of share allotments and the confirmation statement. | The round price and who holds the company, which feeds the dilution arithmetic above. |
| Is it making money? | Annual accounts at Companies House. Small companies can file accounts that leave out the profit and loss account, so the balance sheet may be all that is public. Government has paused plans to change this, so check what is currently required. | Cash, debt and what the company owes people. A balance sheet with little cash and large creditors is a warning. |
| How long can it last? | Ask. Cash divided by monthly net spending is the runway. | Whether the company must raise again within a year, and so whether your equity will be diluted. |
| Is it growing? | Hiring pace on its own jobs page, the metrics it quotes publicly, customer announcements. | Whether the story in the pitch matches what a visitor can see. |
| What does the product earn per customer? | Subscription and marketplace companies are judged on retention and the cost of winning a customer. The SaaS operating model and the unit economics lab show the metrics. | Whether growth is making or losing money at the margin. |
Set the base rate beside any single company. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics follows every new private-sector establishment: 47.2% of those born in the year to March 2021 were still operating in March 2026, and 34.2% of those born in the year to March 2016. That counts all new businesses and not only venture-backed ones, so it is a measure of how often new businesses last, not a forecast for any one.
Where it leads, and what it costs
The strongest case for a startup role early in a career is the speed at which responsibility arrives. A first-year analyst at a growth-stage company may present to the founders, which a first-year banking analyst will not. The cost is the lack of a structured apprenticeship: nobody checks the model, and the habits you build are the ones you bring. Candidates from banking and consulting often find the adjustment is from reviewing to deciding.
The exits are into the same seats the roles feed: business operations, product, venture capital, the next company, or a company of your own. The guide to getting into venture capital recommends a public record in one sector over a longer CV, and a startup role is one of the places to build it. Founding a company is a third decision again, with its own risks, and is not covered here.
This page is about employment
Taking a job at a startup is a different decision from running your own business. If what you want is to trade your own money or to build an audience, those are set out separately in the independent trading and creator business pathways, and they carry risks a salaried role does not.
Go further
Where the roles are
The opportunity tracker
Growth-stage companies that post early-career roles appear on the tracker with their dates. Many startup roles are never posted, so pair it with the routes above.
On the career map
Guides
- How to Get Into Venture Capital
- Cap Tables, Dilution and the Option Pool
- SAFEs, Convertible Notes and Their Equivalents
- How Options Work: Calls, Puts, Payoffs and the First Greek
- SaaS Operating Models: ARR, Sales Capacity, Billings and the Metrics That Follow
- The Consulting Career Path, Analyst to Partner
Models
Sources
GOV.UK, Tax and Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI). Read 30 October 2026.
The EMI conditions: gross assets, employee numbers, the £250,000 option limit, the exercise period and the tax treatment.
Internal Revenue Service, Topic no. 427, Stock options. Read 30 October 2026.
Incentive and non-statutory options: no income at grant for ISOs, possible alternative minimum tax on exercise, and income on exercise for non-statutory options.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, establishment survival by year of birth. Read 30 October 2026; cohorts measured through March 2026.
47.2% survival at five years for the cohort born in the year to March 2021, and 34.2% at ten years for the year to March 2016, for all private-sector establishments.
US Securities and Exchange Commission, Filing a Form D notice. Read 30 October 2026.
The 15-calendar-day filing deadline from the first sale, and that the form is public on EDGAR.
GOV.UK, Preparing and filing Companies House accounts. Read 30 October 2026.
That small companies can file accounts without a profit and loss account, and that plans to change this have been paused.
Questions people ask
Are startup options worth anything?
Sometimes, and the honest answer is that most are worth little or nothing. Value depends on the company surviving, on the sale price clearing the investors’ preferences, and on dilution from later rounds. Treat options as a possible bonus on top of a salary you could live on.
What does a chief of staff do?
Extends a senior executive’s reach: their priorities, the planning cycle and the projects that cross teams. The title has no fixed content, so the questions to ask are who the principal is and which decisions the role may take.
How do I judge whether a startup will survive?
Ask for the runway, which is cash divided by monthly net spending, and when the last round closed. Then read what is public: funding announcements, Form D filings in the United States, and accounts and share allotments at Companies House in the United Kingdom. No filing predicts survival, but a company that cannot answer the runway question is telling you something.
Can I move from banking or consulting into a startup?
Yes, and chief of staff, finance and operations, and strategy roles are the usual doors. Expect to be tested on whether you can work without a team behind you. A short piece of work on a decision the company faces is the strongest application.
The other pathways
Your own business
Independent trading
Whether to put your own capital at risk as a business, with no salary, no employer and no one to share a loss with.
Your own business
Creator businesses
Whether to spend your own time, unpaid at first, building an audience you could earn from, in place of or alongside a job.
This page is general information. It is not financial, legal or tax advice and it does not promise or imply any income.