How do I hire when I can't match market salaries and my runway is tight?
The short answer
Be honest about the gap and make the tradeoff explicit: below-market cash, meaningful equity, and a front-row seat to building something. Don't quietly underpay and hope nobody notices, that breeds resentment and churn. Target people whose motivations aren't purely cash right now: someone returning to work, a strong junior betting on growth, a domain expert who loves the problem. In India, a clear equity explainer plus a written path to a market-rate salary once you raise goes a long way, because most candidates have never held startup equity.
Go deeper, your way
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Why we picked it
This is the honest-framing playbook the answer describes. It tells you to target people who want to learn and grow with a strong founding team (not the maximum-cash candidate), to educate a candidate on not just how many shares but what slice of the whole pie those shares are, and to make an explicit written commitment to correct salaries post-Series A. That last move is exactly what wins over an Indian candidate who has never held startup equity and needs to see a real path to market rate.
Hire people motivated by learning and upside, not top-of-market cash: a below-market offer only holds if the person wants what you are actually offering.
Explain equity fully: how many shares, what percentage of total outstanding that is, and the current valuation, so the candidate can price the tradeoff themselves.
A company-wide below-market policy with an explicit commitment to fix comp at a named milestone (post-Series A) reads as integrity, not a lowball.
Why we picked it
The discipline half of the answer. When cash is tight the reflex is to over-give equity to close the gap, and this piece pushes back hard: you have more leverage than you think, and your first ten hires together should not blow past a roughly 10 percent pool. It gives you a defensible comp philosophy to state out loud instead of negotiating equity ad hoc per candidate, which is what breeds the resentment the answer warns about.
Why we picked it
This is the India-specific explainer you hand a candidate who has never held equity. It defines pool, vesting (typically 3 to 4 years with a lock-in), and exercise price in plain language, and it does not skip the part Indian candidates get burned by: ESOP gains are taxed twice, as a perquisite at exercise (at your income slab) and again as capital gains at sale. It also cites the Companies Act 2013 and SEBI framework, so the numbers you promise are grounded in the actual Indian rules, not a US template.
