有风投支持的初创公司通常都有不可思议的野心。一支创业团队聚在一起，目的是在现有资源不足的条件下，努力创造出不大可能实现的东西和超出合理预期的东西。一旦获得资金支持，初创公司的每个人都会得到一份合理的薪水。但如果把不可能变成现实，真正的回报则是股权。

    我曾不可避免地与我的公司讨论过奖金问题。一种观点认为，初创公司现金紧张，应该限制固定工资开支。但如果公司实现了目标，可以发放不固定的报酬，以奖励员工的出色工作。

    这种逻辑听起来很有说服力，但实际上却是错误的。奖金对于初创公司而言无异于毒药。

    除了销售代表的佣金外，我认为，初创公司在最初几年里，不应该向员工或管理层发放奖金——至少在公司充分了解了自身财务表现之前不应该这么做。问题在于，奖金与初创公司大无畏的雄心壮志不相匹配，对公司和员工而言也都不公平。

    初创公司并非都能如愿实现他们的目标。让我们用比较简单的营收指标来算一笔账。假设一家初创公司之前一年营收300万美元，希望在来年翻四番，达到1,200万美元。结果，这家公司第二年销售额仅达到900万美元。团队奖金的标准是达到或超出目标。团队工作非常努力，而且，为了发展公司业务，他们一定做了大量工作。然而，它终究还是没有达成目标。不幸的是，在这一年里，团队成员们一度认定，他们肯定能得到奖金。毕竟，团队将公司业务增加了三倍，而且也为此付出了辛苦的工作。但公司明确规定，只有达到或超出目标才能获得奖金。

    这种情况下，公司该怎么办？如果不发放奖金，会让努力工作的团队心寒；如果发放了奖金，那就意味着公司的目标是软目标，只要公司业绩在发展，团队工作努力，就应该发放奖金。再增加一个条件，假如公司营收达到1,200万美元，才能首次实现正向现金流，进而才能有现金支付奖金；而如果公司营收为900万美元，则意味着公司亏损了100万美元，需要额外融资。为了弥补损失和可能发放的奖金，公司将不得不面临所有权被进一步稀释的风险。不难想象，当员工离开公司的时候，会说公司的目标太疯狂了——“我们把业务增加了三倍，却连一分钱奖金都得不到。”

    Venture-backed startups are incredibly ambitious. A startup team comes together to try to create something highly improbable and well beyond what can reasonably be expected given the scarce resources at hand. Once financed, everyone at the startup should have a reasonable salary, but the real compensation for achieving the improbable is equity.

    Inevitably, I get into a discussion with my companies about bonus packages. The idea being that startups are cash constrained and should limit the guaranteed salary costs, but that if the company is achieving goals, it should reward its employees with non-guaranteed compensation for a job well done.

    The logic is compelling, but faulty. Bonuses are toxic at startups.

    Outside of sales rep commissions, I don't think startups should be giving employee or management bonuses in the early years -- or at least not before the company has very well understood financial performance. The problem is that bonuses don't match well with the audacious ambition of the startup and aren't fair to the company or its employees.

    Inevitably, startups don't quite live up to their goals. Using revenue metrics because they are simple, consider the startup that has $3 million in previous year revenue and is hoping to 4X that this coming year to $12 million. Instead it does $9 million in sales. The team bonus is based on hitting or exceeding the goals. The team has worked really hard and, by all means, has done strong work growing the business. Yet it's fallen short of the goal. Unfortunately, somewhere over the course of the year, the team members start to assume that they will get the bonus. After all, the team tripled the business and worked really hard to do it. Yet the bonus was clearly for meeting or exceeding the goals.

    What should the company do now? Disappoint their hard-working team by not giving a bonus or give the bonus and suggest that the goals are soft goals and the team will get paid as long as there is general progress and the team works hard. Add to the scenario that at $12 million in revenue the company would be positive cash flow for the first time and have cash to pay a bonus and at $9 million the company loses $1 million and will need to raise more capital and suffer additional dilution to cover the loss and potentially the bonus. It's easy to imagine employees leaving the company and saying that the goals are crazy -- "we tripled the business and didn't even get our bonuses."

    大多数公司的选择会是，无论如何先发放奖金。而这就能让员工们高兴吗？不见得。因为这是他们预料之内的事。那么，奖金能帮助确定明年的宏伟目标吗？也不尽然。在没有达到既定目标的情况下发放奖金等于是在向人们暗示，公司的目标实际上无关紧要，进而也就否定了靠奖金激励留住员工这种说法。

    更糟糕的是，奖金对于招聘也没有太大作用。我认识的大多数人在加入一家公司之前，对奖金都有所怀疑。他们不知道公司的目标有多么宏伟，或者他们实现目标奖金的可能性有多大。此外，在工资里还包含一种自我意识的要素，而这种要素在奖金中却并不存在。在其他待遇平等的情况下，多数人宁愿加入一家提供10万美元年薪的公司，也不愿意接受年薪9万美元加2万美元绩效奖金的待遇。这种选择与规避风险无关，更多的是一种自我肯定，确信自己价值10万美元的工资。再说，他们完全不清楚能获得奖金的可能性到底有多大。

    而且，奖金还会造成一种“堆沙袋”的公司文化，因此也是一种糟糕的激励工具。员工不是想着实现令人不可思议的宏伟目标，而是开始考虑这个目标是否可能实现。如果他们接受一个野心勃勃的目标，他们能否领到奖金。然后，他们就会要求降低目标，选择最有可能获得奖金的目标，而这实际上与公司利益背道而驰。

    那么，大公司又有什么不同呢？大公司并不会确立雄心勃勃的目标（增长10%与增长200%的区别），而且员工通常不会像在初创公司一样，可能获得公司股权。最重要的是，财务目标能够得到更好的理解，而且通常都能够实现。初创公司基于可能的事情进行预测，而大公司则基于可行的事情进行预测。因此，大公司向员工发放奖金更容易操作。

    总之，奖金不是好的招聘工具，也不是留住员工的好工具，更不是好的激励工具。综上所述，奖金会损害公司文化，使团队关注错误的目标。

    既然如此，一家初创公司要想招聘员工、留住人才和激励员工，什么才是有效的薪酬工具呢？答案是股权。给员工支付与公司当前经营状况相符的公平工资，使所有人都能享受到具有巨大升值空间的股票潜力。如果公司实现了翻四番的目标，公司股权的增值幅度肯定要超过业务增加三倍时的幅度。如果员工未能完成计划，他们也会明白，虽然股权并未出现大幅增值，但随着公司不断发展，他们还是会从未来的股票升值中受益的。没有了财务奖励，员工也就不会在工作上玩“空手道”。因为他们知道，只有实现公司的宏伟目标，才能让手中持有的股票回报实现最大化。

    最好的一点是，股票所带来的回报量级远远高于有可能兑现的奖金。（财富中文网）

    本文作者埃瑞克•帕雷为风险投资基金Founder Collective的主理合伙人。本文原载于其个人博客。

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Most companies just pay out the bonus anyway. Did that make the employees happy? Not really. They expected it. Did the bonus help set the ambitious goals for the next year? Not really. Paying the bonus below the goal suggested that the goals don't really matter, which undermines the idea that the bonus is a form of motivation that leads to retention.

    Worse yet, bonuses are not effective at recruiting employees. Most people that I know are a bit skeptical of bonuses before they join a company. They have no idea how ambitious the goals are or how likely they are to achieve the target bonus. On top of that, there is an ego element tied to salary that is absent in bonuses. All other things being equal, most people would rather join a company offering $100,000 a year in salary than make $90,000 a year with a potential target bonus of $20,000. That isn't so much an issue of risk aversion, but more of self assurance that they are worth $100,000 salary combined with the unknown of how likely they are to get any bonus at all.

    Bonuses also create a culture of sandbagging and therefore are a bad motivation tool. Instead of wanting to achieve incredibly ambitious goals, employees start to consider whether the goal is likely and whether they will achieve their bonuses if they accept an ambitious goal. By arguing for lower goals, employees are optimizing for getting a bonus while actually working counter to the interests of the company.

    Why are large companies different? At large companies goals are not as ambitious (10% growth vs. 200% growth) and employees typically don't have the equity potential that they have at startups. Most importantly, financial goals are much better understood and typically achievable. Startups forecast based on what's possible. Large companies forecast based on what's probable. It's easier to bonus employees on the latter than the former.

    So bonuses aren't a good recruiting tool. Or a good retention tool. Or a good motivation tool. For these reasons, bonuses damage culture and focus the team on the wrong objectives.

    What compensation tool is effective for recruiting, retaining, and motivating employees at a startup? Equity. Pay employees a fair salary for the stage of the company and keep everyone aligned to the extraordinary equity potential of huge growth. If the company achieves a 4X plan, the company's equity has appreciated more than if it achieves a 3X plan. When employees don't quite achieve plan, they understand that the equity hasn't appreciated as much, but they are still rewarded for the forward progress with assumed appreciation of their stock. Employees have no financial incentive to sandbag because trying to achieve ambitious goals is how they maximize the equity reward.

    Best of all, equity has the potential of paying out orders of magnitude higher than any potential bonus.

    Eric Paley ( @epaley) is managing partner at Founder Collective. This post originally appeared on his blog.