Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 40 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#21

A useful thought experiment: How much more tokens/equity/RSU's would you buy if you were paid in all cash? If you could buy them at a discount, how much would you buy? If you wouldn't buy thousands of dollars of this token if you were compensated completely in cash, you probably shouldn't take the tokens.

RSUs are different right? Since you can sell them right away. Although they might lose value during your vesting schedule.

Writing this, I now realize that a company doesn't necessarily have to be public to give you RSUs.

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#22
post #17

The main value of token compensation is liquidity. People frequently underestimate how long it will take until exit and their equity becoming cash. Tokens for a good project are liquid immediately on numerous exchanges, and likely will be worth at least something. Don't neglect the time value of money.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, though. In the case of token compensation, it's only liquid if you can easily find another buyer, and the main thing that would be driving the ease of finding a buyer for tokens right now is that there are so many people who are eager to buy literally anything that smells like crypto. So, yeah, it may be easier to dump in the short term, but in return you end up with an additional way for the cash value of your compensation to be driven to zero. Actually, make that three, because thinking about how future SEC activity could impact this sort of thing is the stuff that headaches are made of.

That might not be a consideration at all if the company's chances of long term success isn't a part of your thesis for taking a job there. But why would you take a job at a company that you don't expect to be successful?

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#24

Ethereum is a 'success story', but its not 2015 anymore. I think you'd mad to take tokens as a form of compensation. Why not get a normal job and buy some crypto if you want to gamble?

> [...] which is offering tokens instead of equity

compensation != equity

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#25
Neither equity nor tokens have much long term value if the company fails; or simply fails to be a unicorn. It's a nice little extra in case things work out against all odds though. If you are founder, you may get a little out of an acquihire, IPO, or other exit but for employees the benefits are usually more modest (if any).

The big question is if they are offering equity to others. Because if they do, you can be sure that that is the asset to own when things go well.

This is actually a problem with equity based blockchain token investments. The premise of a proper token structure is to create some kind of long term value that is tied to the economic success of the company. If you have both tokens and equity, the shareholders will try to maximize their return on investment, typically at the cost of the token value and the ecosystem it is supposed to benefit. There's a conflict of interest there that dooms many tokens before they get off the ground because ultimately their long term value is redirected to the share holders instead of the token holders.

On the other hand, if blockchains are going to eventually produce some unicorns, now would be the time to get involved. IMHO, we need to move beyond the current rather underwhelming state of the art that resembles the early dot com days in many ways. But then, the dot com bubble did produce plenty of successful startups in the end. IMHO it will take probably a decade or so before we'll know for sure whether there are business cases for some form of blockchain company to succeed.

Either way, insist on cash payments combined with something that may or may not be worth the gamble. That way you have something tangible.

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#27
post #21

A useful thought experiment: How much more tokens/equity/RSU's would you buy if you were paid in all cash? If you could buy them at a discount, how much would you buy? If you wouldn't buy thousands of dollars of this token if you were compensated completely in cash, you probably shouldn't take the tokens.

RSUs are different right? Since you can sell them right away. Although they might lose value during your vesting schedule. Writing this, I now realize that a company doesn't necessarily have to be public to give you RSUs.

Seems you realized this already, but RSUs are only sellable right away if there's a buyer right away. For publicly traded equities this is almost always the case. But plenty of private companies issue RSUs as well. I have some in a few companies currently for which there is no market.

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#28
I would consider it like stock-options, in other words a few lottery tickets.

You might get lucky and they might have some value in the future, but most likely they'll never be worth anything.

Get the job if you think it's going to be interesting and if you're happy with the cash compensation, not for the lottery tickets you're getting.

Re: Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives?

#29
I would humbly suggest that you might not understand equity. Equity is a right to future cashflow that the company will generate (aka dividends), as well as a claim on company assets after all debts are paid off.

If the company builds valuable assets or generates a lot of cash, then equity is valuable. The company might be able to "get bought out or go public" as a result, but if not you still have a claim on future cashflow and company assets. Most companies don't go public but many of those do pay dividends to equity holders.

Anyway my only real advice is to find out how the founders are compensating themselves. That will tell you a lot about where they think value creation and capture will accrue in the long run.

Post reply on HN