41–50 of 175 posts
Made 1 million on a company exit of about 100 million as technical co-founder. Started with 15% but got diluted to 1% after several rounds of funding including down rounds.
haha WOW oh my god, and the software engineers getting a fraction of a fraction of a percent and being "reassured" that its a generous offer!
So far 0$ (I would guess this is the median, as most do not succeed)
I have done far, far better at larger companies in terms of salary and stock programs. If I'd stayed one of the big companies, I'd likely be able to retire right now (not that I will -- I like writing software and I plan to continue doing it as long as I can, ideally well into my 70s).
I was employee #1. It sold to google. All employee options were wiped out.
Overall, simply bank on it being nothing
I was co-founder of a software company’s old during internet bubble. My partner funded everything so we split shares 80-20. Then we both got substantially diluted by two rounds of investment and 140 employee share packages. I think i had 5% at the end. When sold we got 15% in cash, and 85% in stock in the public internet company, that was locked up for one year. The cash was a $800,000+ check. A year later i sold the…
Do you regret selling the stock, unless the parent company went under.
If I could have sold earlier I would have. Even then i understood a near revenue-less business couldn’t be worth $500M+.
All: Watch out for survivor bias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w
Not a huge financial loss, but I learnt a valuable lesson.
I joined as a regular non-manager, non-lead employee. Actually, I started as an intern, and was offered a full time job immediately after that. I was employee #~100. I sold 1625 shares in a secondary round for $14,000. When the company eventually exited, I sold 27,375 shares for $1.1M. I have 1000 shares remaining. If I hadn’t sold anything, my shares would be worth about $5.1M today.
Curious why you have 1,000 shared remaining? Are you still employed there? Also, what was the tax bill on the $14k and $1.1M in terms of percentage? Was it long term capital gains 15% fixed?
Back when I was a tax lawyer, you could exclude 50% of your gain, though the rules may have changed. Also, if you rolled over your gains into other “qualified small businesses”, you could defer taxation altogether.