Independent of the liquidity issues current rsu holders will have an expiry date. Stripe not going public by those expiry dates will have impact on their ability to recruit and keep staff.
RSUs don't have expiry dates once they vest, is Stripe doing something weird there?
No. They are double trigger RSU which are bog standard. Tax rules require them having a real chance to be forfeited so they have expirations. Every double trigger rsu contract I’ve seen includes them.
This. Companies that IPOd in 2019 were lucky. So many organizations had to and are going to have to wait out covid, the looming recession, etc... The next few years will be interesting. I'm excited to see which domains are recession-proof. Something tells me enterprise software is going to be where the moola is made.
Strong agree. It feels like a different lifetime to think back to 2018 and 2019; back then, everyone in town was hyper-fixated on a whole raft of companies that kept teasing their IPOs. I did some very quick and lazy Googling [1][2], and even I was surprised by just how long the full list of familiar names is, looking at 2018 and 2019 IPOs. Just to drop a few incredibly-familiar ones: - Uber - Lyft - Pinterest - Zoom…
> I personally know a bunch of people that spent months (or years) of their lives in suspense waiting for one of these.
8 years for me. I was an early employee at a YC startup that is now pretty close to having an IPO. At least, I used to think that. Now I'm not sure how much longer I'll need to wait.
> By any measure we're already in a recession today. Except we are not by the accepted definition of a recession (2 consecutive quarters of negative growth). You can make the word mean something else, but then it’s kinda useless.
The "accepted definition of a recession"? Where are you getting this from? I understand that some government/finance organizations in specific countries might have some sort of "definition" of the term recession, but in general parlance, "recession" is just when the economy is not doing well. Some organizations do have indicators like "2 consecutive quarters of negative growth", but doesn't mean it's a universal "acc…
Well it is pretty much the official definition. But no, recession does not mean the economy is not doing well, because economic health is not binary. What recession means is economic contraction, and usually people look for confirmation after one quarter of negative growth, hence the two quarter “rule”.
Stripe has "double trigger" RSUs, meaning you don't actually own them until after IPO + lockup period. There are tax advantages to doing it this way, but it means that a senior hire "getting" $200k/year can't sell on the secondary markets, and may be getting shares that they will never be able to sell for their supposed value.
If a Stripe employee has $100,000 worth of RSUs and leaves Stripe now, what happens to their RSUs? Stripe has double-trigger RSUs which won't vest until after IPO. Do they get to keep these RSUs until after the IPO + lockup period, even though they're not employed at Stripe anymore? (Is there another name for RSUs owned by someone not employed by a company anymore? e.g. unvested shares?)
Yes, the employee will still get the RSUs they earned once ipo + lockup happens, even if they’re no longer at stripe. Not sure what the term for that is, though.
This is why many Stripes on blind are not angry. They will get more shares next year.
They should still be angry because this company should’ve gone public and made them liquid a year ago.
I'm not too sure about this. Stripe has double trigger RSUs with a 6 or 7mo lock up.
Let's say they went public in '21 instead of raising money in June of that year. The market would've already turned by the end of the lockup period. By delaying the IPO there is still some chance that the shares can be sold on the public market for more than the grant price -- I would note that this really benefits Stripe hired post-2020 but at this point that's like 75% of the company.
Please feel free to send any worthless Stripe RSUs my way. I've been looking for a way to pay someone for some of them for the better part of a decade at this point.
Stripe shares do trade on secondary markets. If you sniff around on the big ones, I bet you could pick some up.
Thanks! Forge/Equityzen, or is there a better option?
>The opportunity cost of this restriction on their lives is huge. What restriction, exactly?
That they continue working at Stripe, instead of pursuing other life goals. Or to phrase parent's point differently: by not IPO'ing, Stripe forfeited the premium public markets would have been willing to pay Stripe employees for their stock.
Having $600K would be life changing for most people. And they never really had it to begin with.
yes, of course. And being told you have $1mm and then later finding out you only have $600k is frustrating and problematic. You can say they should just be happy to have anything at all, and maybe you're right, but basic human psychology doesn't care about what's "right".
That they continue working at Stripe, instead of pursuing other life goals. Or to phrase parent's point differently: by not IPO'ing, Stripe forfeited the premium public markets would have been willing to pay Stripe employees for their stock.