It would be great to know how early you joined (Employee number X) or similar context.
Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#2No IPO yet, but participated in a tender offer last year to sell a portion of my stock (no long working there). Employee 13 (jr role), value of 4 year grant (at time of offer) $1.05m at a “low” unicorn valuation (e.g a bit over $1b).
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#3$1200
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#4No IPO yet, but participated in a tender offer last year to sell a portion of my stock (no long working there). Employee 13 (jr role), value of 4 year grant (at time of offer) $1.05m at a “low” unicorn valuation (e.g a bit over $1b).
How much of a hypothetical salary cut did you take to work there as opposed to other places, do you mind talking about your salary history?
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#5No IPO yet, but participated in a tender offer last year to sell a portion of my stock (no long working there). Employee 13 (jr role), value of 4 year grant (at time of offer) $1.05m at a “low” unicorn valuation (e.g a bit over $1b).
How much of a hypothetical salary cut did you take to work there as opposed to other places, do you mind talking about your salary history?
Not sure if there’s a comparable role I can point to. This was a non-technical role and my second job out of school (started a few years ago). Salary was definitely lower than a SWE job or PM job (my current role)
Quite honestly I just got very lucky and would be surprised if it happened to me again. The company is doing better than I expected and would expect it to raise at a higher valuation soon (sold the bare minimum I had to to participate)
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#6I worked at Uber starting in 2015 for 2 years. Not going to give numbers and I have not been following secondary markets but the company was already valued at $70b or so back then and I don’t think there’s been meaningful movement in the valuation since then. Point is people who joined even 4 years ago aren’t exactly making a huge multiple of their initial grant.
Lyft’s IPO bodes well though for Uber stock. We’ll see soon enough!
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#7I was one of the first 5 employees at a YC unicorn. They haven't had an IPO yet, but it's getting closer. My original offer was for 0.5% of the company, but I didn't vest all of my shares before leaving. The shares are currently worth about $1.5M, and I'm hoping that they will be worth about $3-5M after the IPO and lockup period.
My salary was $120K and I relocated to SF from a different country, so I don't really feel like I took a pay cut. But the cost of living was extremely high, so the money didn't go as far as I thought it would. Especially because my spouse wasn't able to work on a dependent visa.
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#8This is an interesting question: I feel like it's made under an assumption that there's some target number that responses should average out towards. Or maybe there's some personal validation behind the question. Either way, I hope you've all made enough that you're comfortable and happy with your lives :)
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of a hypothetical salary cut did you take to work there as opposed to other places, do you mind talking about your salary history?
Not sure if there’s a comparable role I can point to. This was a non-technical role and my second job out of school (started a few years ago). Salary was definitely lower than a SWE job or PM job (my current role) Quite honestly I just got very lucky and would be surprised if it happened to me again. The company is doing better than I expected and would expect it to raise at a higher valuation soon (sold the bare min…
Well done.
Re: Ask HN: How much did you make from your startup's IPO?
#10I worked at Uber starting in 2015 for 2 years. Not going to give numbers and I have not been following secondary markets but the company was already valued at $70b or so back then and I don’t think there’s been meaningful movement in the valuation since then. Point is people who joined even 4 years ago aren’t exactly making a huge multiple of their initial grant. Lyft’s IPO bodes well though for Uber stock. We’ll see…
Good point, but properly priced ISOs should have a discount of about 2/3rd the value of the preferred stock (as determined by the previous Series-* funding round) at the time of grant. So even if the valuation hasn't changed, most peoples' options should still mint a pretty penny if they were priced according to typical practice. I don't know anything about Uber.
For reference, "What’s a Fair 409A Discount?": https://www.sethlevine.com/archives/2018/08/whats-a-fair-409...