Back then, in the fall of 1998, everybody was either public, or Pre-IPO. By 1999, some companies were filing to go public on the same day they were announced, even if they didn't yet have a shipping product, or customers - so I knew that getting in as the third or fourth employee at this company was a big deal, especially as I hadn't yet completed my degree. This inexperience led to my floundering through the interview and completely low-balling my salary request. I left knowing I'd possibly earned myself the position, but likely on the basis of how little I had asked for as much as how well I had represented my talents.
As I wrote in an e-mail to my parents at 2 a.m. that night (October 14, 1998):
"I also had to say how much money I expected to pull. Gulp -- I had no idea. I tried to have him tell me what I should say, asking where the money was coming from, and if the company was profitable yet. The answers -- primary investors and no. The eventual plan is to put together a working product, find secondary investors as a result of the product, and then go public. He threw words at me like "stock holdings", "venture stock and capital", "initial public offering" and said that I was early enough to be on "the ground floor" although obviously not a co-founder, therefore as every Silicon Valley startup dreams of, we could "go Netscape", and there is already an established product."
Long story short, I was offered the position at the low-low price of $1,200 a month for what was expected to be 20 hours a week in Silicon Valley and 15 hours a week or so from home in Berkeley, where I was wrapping up my degree in Political Science, having completed the degree in Mass Communications my junior year. And there was no stock. Another colleague and I were told we would be given shares of the founder's stock in time - whenever that would be. Needless to say, the company didn't take off. I worked hard, and put in the hours, and eventually, the company saw it was time to raise my pay to match the effort I had been putting in - to $2000 a month and then to $2333 and maybe up to $2500 a month by the time it folded the next year. I wasn't getting rich, but felt a lot better about things than many of my starving student friends.
But how could I have known what to ask for, being as naive as I was? In another insightful piece, Guy Kawasaki says there are "Nine Questions To Ask a Startup". By my third job in the Valley, I felt I had a better handle on the salary side, but still was on the low-end to start, my past underpayments still having impact years later. Had I had Guy's instructions in my back pocket, not only would I possibly have been paid better, I may have selected more successful companies from 1998 to 2001 and made some cash rather than watching so many other people get rich when all I got was tired.