‘My salary is more than your pre-seed funding’: Woman’s honest reply to founder

The founder and CEO of healthcare startup Walnut Roshan Patel have reached out candidate software engineer after raising a pre-seed round.

The founder asked, “I run a startup increasing access to healthcare by making it more affordable. We just raised a pre-seed round and are looking to hire talented engineers. Are you interested in chatting?”

The reply he received from the candidate was, “Hi Roshan. I just checked on Crunchbase and my salary is currently more than your entire pre-seed round.”

Roshan Patel shared a Tweet on Twitter saying, “Still thinking about this exchange almost 2 years later.” However, he shared a screenshot while he blurred out the engineer’s name to protect privacy.

Still thinking about this exchange almost 2 years later. pic.twitter.com/YI9b3NZtIV

— Roshan Patel (@roshanpateI) April 26, 2023

After sharing the post the ways she has straightforwardly responded to the query is now going viral on Twitter. The exchange in question occurred in September 2021 – shortly after Walnut raised funding in a pre-seed round.

However, this has also raised concerns as many startups face concern in hiring a potential candidate due to the salary protectives. There are times when they pay more than their budgets leading to losses and even layoffs at the organizations.