I have recently signed a contract with an early-mid stage startup (5 people without counting me, less than 3 million on seed funding, and about 3 years old). The conditions are more than fair imo and I am happy with them.
However the CEO explicitly stated, on the email where he sent the formal offer, that "of course in a future if things work out there’s potential for salary increases and equity bonuses".
My doubt is, how do I detect this moment on the future? When should I bring up the issue? Should I guide myself by chronological criteria (after six months, one year, or a certain fixed amount of time), by the achievement of certain milestones, or by the moments when the company receives new funding?
I know the chronological criteria is the standard in many big corporations, but I am not sure if it applies for the startups too. Asking for an improvement every time the startup accomplishes a goal makes sense to me from a performance point of view, but it also seems like blackmail for doing what is supposed to be my duty. The latter makes sense to me as well from the sources availability standpoint, but at the same time I feel it can be a little uncorrelated with my personal performance.
I just would appreciate to hear what are usually the rules of thumb to identify the appropiate moment to demand a contract revision on the context aforementioned.
EDIT: "Your question has been identified as a possible duplicate of another question. If the answers there do not address your problem, please edit to explain in detail the parts of your question that are unique.". This is simply false. People who tag questions as duplicate should take the effort to read them carefully and understand the nuances.