Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 586 posts

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#51

Post by battlebot »

Someone1234 wrote: post #20
fermigier wrote: post #10

Should have been titled "... in the USA" as tax rules are very different in other countries. For instance, in France, you only owe money to the taxperson when you sell your shares, for a profit. If you sell for a loss, this is tax-deducible.

The US really does have a lot of problems with their tax system to be honest. For a country whose citizens outwardly hate tax, you'd think they would have one of the best, most straightforward, and fair tax systems in the world. But instead you have one of the most convoluted, loopholey, broken systems in the world. Whereas in countries where taxes aren't as "hated" (Europe, Canada, etc) they don't pay a cent to file…

We citizens have very little say in the machinery. That is the biggest problem we face these days. Regular people have no agency at all and there is a sneering elite that runs things from the coasts who believe everyone else is a sheep to be sheared for them.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#52

Post by adhambadr »

It has always baffled me the way founders treat employees and investors so vastly asymmetric. Ive been involved in rounds close enough to see how just the "hint" of a potential investment and all the numbers, financials, cap tables are sent in one big email to their analyst, while some early employees (who controversially have worked just as hard as the founders) have no clue who owns what and whats going on. I get it without money we can't build anything, but without good employees everything else is multiplied by 0. The math in the article is unique to the U.S but I think the "essence" behind it is quite universal.

What stops founders from offering a company wide "vested Share vs. Cash" with an equal cap for everyone on each new round ? For e.g founders planning to sell 10% of their own share while raising round in the so called "Take money off table", all employees get the 'right' to exercise the same option, hence instead of dilution to the new value its straight selling the value they created ? what are the arguments against this ? For the investors its the same, and if the cap of how much of the vested % you get to sell is kept realistically low it should not risk decreasing the value of the private stock.

while i agree with Jaymzcampbell as an employee you're better off with dropping the "hope" the paper value of what you own means anything, however its contradicting to the popular piece of employee incentive tool that is quite essential in acquiring& keeping good talent.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#54

Post by battlebot »

krallja wrote: post #37
Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US really does have a lot of problems with their tax system to be honest. For a country whose citizens outwardly hate tax, you'd think they would have one of the best, most straightforward, and fair tax systems in the world. But instead you have one of the most convoluted, loopholey, broken systems in the world. Whereas in countries where taxes aren't as "hated" (Europe, Canada, etc) they don't pay a cent to file…

It doesn't cost money to file taxes in the United States. Well, you have to pay for the stamps, paper, and the printer ink, I guess.

Compliance cost.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#55

Post by secabeen »

JonFish85 wrote: post #33
chris_7 wrote: post #19

> fixed PTO Why on earth is this a downside? "Unlimited vacation" is a scam.

If you ever wanted confirmation of this, suggest to your company that instead of "unlimited vacation", which is really vague and hard to understand, the company give 8 weeks vacation that doesn't accrue or roll over year to year.

Interestingly, that's not legal in California. Vacation is a form of earned income, and must accrue and be paid out at separation. (You can cap accruals, but vacation accrued must be paid, and can't expire.)

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#56

Post by rwmj »

TheLarch wrote: post #9

I was so naive when I joined my first startup. When we were purchased, it came to light that the main guy never got around to signing my stock option agreement. He is a fucking mensch and signed it after the fact. Character buys a unique, abiding respect.

At my first startup, the share option terms and conditions had a clause allowing the company to arbitrarily change any condition in the contract. Of course we signed it and didn't think much about it. At the IPO this clause was very predictably used to extend all the employees'[1] vesting schedule to many years after the IPO event. By that time the options were worthless because the company was acquired in a fire sale.

[1] Naturally by "employee" they didn't include the founder or members of his family who worked there.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#58

Post by battlebot »

Vinkekatten wrote: post #49
BoorishBears wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it because it feels incredibly crusty. Nothing seems to update without hitting F5, there's annoying amount of jargon and poorly named fields everywhere, and in my company it's also tied into everything from client billing to asset management, presumably because it's sold as something that does everything including breakfast, and all that noise seems to permeate into every ticket type (I can't search for a tick…

We have a few tie-ins too, but only for Bitbucket stuff like feature branches and occationally Confluence. What's a better alternative to Jira though?

For ticketing, not sure. For agile: Pivotal Tracker.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#59

Post by arcticbull »

equalarrow wrote: post #8

Great post and I totally agree. I recently talked to my financial advisor about my current company and we went through all the numbers for various pricing scenarios (of a public offering) over the next 4-6 year, at various valuations. From his point of view, he encourages me to stay the course - quite the opposite from most of the tech friends I know (most usually don't stick around after a few years). On a side note…

JIRA isn't a tracker, it's a tracker construction kit.

If you put the legos together right, it's great. If you build a turd with it, it's gonna suck. That aside, it's slow and gets in your way a lot. IMO it's the way to go though.

Post reply on HN