Make the equity line on your offer readable before the next hire
Candidates cannot price a share count they have nothing to compare it against. Fixing that costs a paragraph in the offer letter.
The equity line is doing more of the recruiting work than it used to, and it is the part of an offer a candidate cannot read.
That is the argument put by Inc., which contrasts the position of employees at a large listed employer, who can see what their stock is worth, with candidates at private startups, who cannot.
A share number on its own carries no information. Ten thousand shares means nothing without the denominator.
So state the denominator. Give the total shares outstanding, or the percentage of the company the grant represents, on the date of the offer.
State the strike price and the valuation it was set against. A candidate who knows the strike knows what the option costs to exercise and what has to happen before it is worth exercising.
Say what dilution does. Future rounds cut the percentage, and a candidate who learns that after signing will assume it was hidden from them.
None of this requires a promise about the outcome. It requires the same numbers the founder already uses to think about their own stake.
The reason to do it before the next hire rather than after is that the offer letter is where trust is set, and an unreadable number invites the candidate to assume the worst of it.