Staff accountant - Anonymous employee Sandbox Industries Employee Review

Great leadership, LPs, and deal flow

Be mindful of stage of your career and your comp goals

I worked with a lot of smart, motivated people while at Sandbox and made some great personal and professional connections. For the most part, it was a positive, laid-back working environment where everyone has the opportunity to learn a lot since even younger, junior-level employees are given significant responsibility and autonomy. It would be an enjoyable place to work for someone who's self-directed and dislikes stuffy corporate structure.

The management partners--at least those who weren't entirely absent--generally lacked vision and wasted time and money on worthless, derivative ideas while abandoning those that showed promise. There was an almost creepy obsession with the "Sandbox culture" that involved reminding employees how amazing Sandbox is while not mentioning that they have had no significant accomplishments. I heard plenty of lofty goals and grand plans but saw no follow-through. The Sandbox hiring strategy is based primarily on nepotism and social connections rather than merit and experience. Of course, the only people willing to work for the salary and equity they offer are fresh-out-of-college friends of existing employees. Sandbox wants naïve, inexperienced employees to work startup hours for startup wages while offering pittances for equity. I was glad for the experience I gained working at Sandbox while working with some very smart people, but the smartest ones knew that it wasn't in their best interests to stay longer than a year or two. The pay and equity are substandard and you never know when a partner will take a rare interest in your startup and decide to shut it down because he just didn't like the idea on that particular day.