Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this graph in nominal price or inflation-adjusted price? It is not obvious from the source.
Jesus fucking Christ
I asked a question to learn more, please be nicer.
Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
351–360 of 379 posts
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What happened was that in the 70s energy got expensive. Only temporarily. Energy today, adjusted for inflation, is actually quite a bit cheaper now than it was even before the early 70s oil crisis.
Nope [1] Lord grant me the confidence of a HN commentor talking about economics :/ [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=WTISPLC ,
Evidently my previous guess (in another exchange upthread) that the Fed data was adjusted for inflation was incorrect. Here's an inflation adjusted chart of crude oil prices:
https://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted...
So, not "Nope".
Also, crude oil is not all there is to "energy". Here are a couple of other charts:
Electricity prices 1960-2011:
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.php?t=p...
I was somewhat off about the peak due to the "energy crisis", it was actually in 1983.
Gasoline prices 1929-2015:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-915-march-7-2016-a...
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope [1] Lord grant me the confidence of a HN commentor talking about economics :/ [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=WTISPLC ,
Is this graph in nominal price or inflation-adjusted price? It is not obvious from the source.
Given what I found in the link I posted in response, I think the answer is "nominal".
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blog post from 2014: https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity That's more of an admonishment, but at least they recognized the problem ...
(I work at YC) Yes, we care a lot about making employee equity more generous and more fair. Part of our YC curriculum now is teaching founders about these issues and encouraging them to follow best practices around being generous and transparent with employees about equity compensation like Sam discussed in his blog post. I think there is still a lot more we can do, though.
I pretty much ignore startup recruiters now because of my personal experience with the dynamic explained in the article.
If recruiters explained that yes, we don't actually shaft you in their message, I might actually take a look.
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I'm fairly ignorant about these things, but I'll give it a go. My company is an LLC. In a sense, I have this equity. This is how the value is defined: Value = Percent_Of_Shares *(Current_Price_Of_Company - Price_of_Company_At_Time_Of_Issuance) Note that, on the day these issued to me, the value here is equal to zero, because the current price of company is equal to the price of company at time they are issued. Thu…
I only make money on this in the case of a liquidity event, or if the company decides to start paying "dividends" or whatever the appropriate finance word is here.
[deleted]
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you verified the valuation of the common stock the company is reporting to the IRS? The common stock (what you probably get for your options) is usually valued at significantly less than the valuation from the latest raise.
Interesting, I have not but will investigate.
If you were granted Incentive Stock Options (ISOs), you are in for a world of hurt. You may end up wishing you'd never spent so much money on them. With the recent Trump Tax Reform, AMT thresholds have risen but it's best to check with a CPA (or what's called an EA - Enrolled Agent) about the tax implications of exercising your options. You may view the upside in an entirely different light.
The nastiness of AMT is another huge reason the startup stock option game has become worthless/-ve worth to most people who have been in this industry long enough to know better. With Trump's Tax Reforms, this has somewhat lessened, but it's still a huge problem.
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That depends a lot on how you count." No, I don't think that it does. The bottom 50% generally do not have savings and investments - they invest their wealth in tangibles: Housing, food, belongings. It is not meaningful to look at investments or savings as a measure of wealth when most people near the bottom do not and have never had those things. It's necessary to look at what does signify wealth in this class: Con…
I think we're seeing two conflicting trends at work. People have better and better consumables in their lives: always-connected pocket computers, cars with amazing safety systems that last much longer than before, and bigger rental apartments with amenities like air conditioning, cable TV and WiFi. At the same time, they are more and more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck with no savings, and no hope of owning…
But they are not more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck. That likelihood has not increased. That is simply how most people live, and how they have AFAICT always lived.
Income is not the dominant factor in whether or not someone lives paycheck to paycheck. People live this way with startlingly high incomes.
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#358I'm facing a headache with some options I was granted for a startup back in 2013 for being an advisor. I didn't exercise the options at the time (hindsight is 20-20). The startup is doing well - it recently raised ~$300m at a ~$3b valuation, but my options expire in Dec 2023 and I'm growing increasingly concerned that they won't have a liquidity event before then. If I exercise my options before then it will be taxed…
> hindsight is 20-20 Might be best to stop using this idiom.
Why?
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#359Has anyone here made significant (2x exercise price) amounts from stock options at a non-unicorn in the last 5 years?
It's very common to sell stock at > 30x exercise price when you get into a growing company at the right time. A lot of imponderables in that, and all of that risk is borne by you. You end up making VCs and founders rich: they get to sell stock at even higher multiples, and at much lower risk: they get to sell on the day of IPO, and they also get preferred shares, which have more protections (founders used to have Common Stock only, as the article states, but that has changed, and they also get to sell stock during intermediate financing rounds, which also considerably reduces their risk).
Re: Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad (2019)
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope [1] Lord grant me the confidence of a HN commentor talking about economics :/ [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=WTISPLC ,
Evidently my previous guess (in another exchange upthread) that the Fed data was adjusted for inflation was incorrect. Here's an inflation adjusted chart of crude oil prices: https://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted... So, not "Nope". Also, crude oil is not all there is to "energy". Here are a couple of other charts: Electricity prices 1960-2011: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtex…
Still nope. What you’ve done is a very elaborate exercise in point missing, not that I’m surprised. Take a look at that chart again and do some thinking. There’s a reason for using nominal prices to illustrate what happened after the oil shock. The flat line that suddenly begins to jump around like a spastic house cat illustrates a very specific point. Anyway, I should know better than to engage with you people.
This comment section is nothing if not predictable.