When is it reasonable and justified to offer your employees equity in the company?

I'd say that the equity discussion varies a lot from founder to founder. While harsh, I believe the decision often comes down to "how replaceable is this role?" and how much value founders see in the respective role, channel, or activity.

I've also been involved in equity discussions where I knew beforehand that other team members were offered more (sales or tech), thus, naturally, I implied the value seen in marketing was not that big.

2 things I noticed:

• Founders say "LinkedIn is our main acquisition channel" but then won't offer equity for the person managing it. This is the main signal that they see it as a nice-to-have, not a must-have. If they truly valued it as core to revenue, the equity would follow.

• Marketing roles often get the "prove it first, then we'll talk equity" treatment, while tech and sales get it upfront. It makes no sense to me because by the time you've proven your work is valuable, you have leverage to leave and negotiate better elsewhere.

Curious, tho, did you accept the offer without equity?

Honestly this hits close to home. I worked with a couple early-stage startups here in NYC and the equity conversation is always awkward lol.

The way I see it - if your work directly moves the needle on revenue or growth, you should at least have the conversation about equity. Doesn't matter if you're writing code or building someone's brand on LinkedIn. If you're the reason clients are walking through the door, that's not just "marketing support" , that's sales with extra steps.

The fact that they had equity listed for other roles but not yours tells you exactly how they valued that position. Which is weird because personal brand = pipeline = revenue. That math isn't hard.

To answer your actual question though , I think it depends less on the title and more on how replaceable the role is. Engineers get equity because good ones are hard to find. But a great brand builder who actually converts? That's rare too. They should've at least offered something, even if it was small.

And yeah that last point about loyalty without ownership... been there. You can't ask people to go down with the ship when they don't even have a life jacket

Hey Nika, I typically advice offering equity to people who directly influence the company's bottom line. Like a developer building the core product or someone driving majority of the sales.

That said, I've seen a risky trend in startups: founders with shaky survival odds offer equity with no pay to "test" things out. That's an extreme we should avoid.

In your case, it feel an affiliate model might've fit better: fixed pay for your efforts, plus a percentage of sales you generate through their profile.

Equity makes sense for roles taking real risk; like early hires building the foundation (tech, GTM, ops) when cash is tight and failure odds are high. For marketing gigs like LinkedIn management, it's rarer unless you're revenue-critical or joining pre-seed; treat it as a negotiation lever tied to results.

The "loyalty without ownership" paradox is real; anchor offers to impact, stage, and vesting (4yrs cliff) so everyone's skin in the game. Fairness starts with transparency upfront. Spot on callout, Nika

I think these roles get equity because they are building the foundation, if it sinks, their company(e.g code) is gone. If a personal brand builder creates a massive pipeline, they are essentially 'renting' their influence to the company. Many founders hesitate on equity for marketing because they see it as a service rather than an asset.

If that LinkedIn channel becomes a major revenue driver, denying equity won't be fair, because you’re basically asking someone to build a gold mine they don't have rights to. Nika, did they offer any performance-based bonuses instead, or was it a clear 'no' across the board?"