I wanted to graph the results thus far. Pretty interesting... About 20% of responders claim exit yields of over $150k.
Check it out here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlQ_IeF38HHndGo...
Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
131–140 of 191 posts
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#132Wow...I have a whole new appreciation for how unbelievably lucky I got. Never even worked in Silicon Valley and had multiple exits that were, judging from this poll data, quite anomalous. Even when I was the employee. When I started out I had no clue about exits or options or any of it. It was just another number on my offer letter. I took the job because I wanted to learn and do some fun graphics programming. It rea…
Surely you've read enough HN to know that profiting from an exit is more than just luck?
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
exactly! You take almost as much risk and work just as many hours as when you work for yourself. Except you own very little in equity (as a developer, usually less than 10%) and you have no control over what happens with the company (usually when VC takes over, they will be trying to make an ROI asap at the expense of any long-term plans).
10%? I think it is more in the lines of 3% as an early employee and it goes down from there.
Try 0.1% to 3% for employee # < 10.
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#134The numbers for 150k through 11m are very believable.
However the 'greater than $11M' is really looking like a totally anomaly.
http://opani.com/dirk/crunch-acquisitions/results/#key=(redu...
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
By those standards, you'd have to be even dumber to be a founder: bad hours, lots of risk, bad pay and lots of stress. Most good founders were employees at hot startups, where they learned what to do and joined 'networks of success.'
Less than "most" good founders were employees at hot startups. I base this on a good deal of data.
Post it. I have data to the contrary.
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#136How did 51 people on here get more than $11m out of their ownership? Calling BS w/o references.
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#137I would be highly suspicious of the greater than $11M category. You'd have to have one hell of an exit to get $11M as an employee and according to the poll about 1 / 16 people on hacker news have been through this or more. From my experience and those of my peers I'd put it at somewhere betwen 1/100 (being extremely optimistic) to 1/1000 (probably still being optimistic) - and yes there are the google, facebook etc. stories but for each there are the 1000 other untold stories that didn't pay anything sizeable.
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're suggesting that having classes of shares is unconscionable? If the idea of preferred shares shocks your conscience, you should spend a lot more time studying how startup financing works (at a nuts and bolts level) before taking the plunge and working at one.
I'd appreciate it if you can recommend some books/articles on the subject.
It really depends on what you're looking to learn, but if it's "pitfalls in financing startups", I'd start here:
Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#139Re: Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
#140First employee hired at a startup. Paid for my options before leaving the company. Six months later the company was acquihired by Google. Three months after that I was given paperwork informing me that those shares are now worth exactly $0.00/each. Founders made out well enough from the deal to pick up high-end luxury sports cars though, which is the important part of an exit, right?
There are a number of reasons this could have happened: 1. You left before any of your stock vested. Assuming a standard four year vesting schedule and a one year cliff, this makes complete sense. (Although you are saying that you paid for your options, so this likely isn't the case here). 2. The company got shut down, its assets liquidated, and the founders and a select group of employees went to work for Google. Th…
I worked for a company that got three offers for acquisition, all of which were talent grabs:
- One really high offer from a social network. Talks fell through.
- One reasonable offer from a relatively unknown company (which they took, good culture fit).
- One completely terrible offer from a major tech company, with incredibly high salaries afterwards.
The first one would have been the best for investors, and good for the employees, except the culture fit wasn't quite there. The second was a great culture fit, but wasn't that great for the investors (especially considering it was a cash-and-stock deal and the stock tanked). The third would have been a fantastic deal for the employees and a slap in the face to investors (which is why they didn't take it).
It's funny how easy it is to take the asshole route when it comes down to it.