FastCompany Magazine

“I had a CEO who had offered this new engineer three-quarters of a percent of the company, but he wanted more. He was screwed over at his last startup. And the CEO didn’t know what to do. I asked, ‘What’d you give other guys at his level?’ Three-quarters. So that’s what he should tell him: ‘You’re not going to get screwed because nobody’s talking me into paying more.’ The CEO came back and said, ‘Done deal.’ The engineer didn’t want 1%. He was asking for fair. If you’ve been a CEO, you know. If not, you have to learn the hard way. We make some of the hard way the easy way.”