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The title of the article is mostly clickbait. Anyone who's lived in SV for a decade or so knows this well. Startups are a scam unless you are a founder. They are a meat grinder that runs on naive young new college grads who buy into the bullshit that their options are worth anything.
Making less money isn't really the risky part about founding a startup. The risky part is missing out on years of other life experiences, stressing (or losing) your closest personal relationships, failing and feeling personally responsible for disappointing everyone you convinced to believe in you, and developing an anxiety disorder (or worse) from chronic long-term stress. Author's suggestion that they could have ta…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> allowing early exercise along with secondary sales restricted only by a short right-of-first-refusal period Do you mean cashless exercise?
I think he means 83b early exercise: https://www.esofund.com/blog/early-exercise-options-83b-elec... Extremely beneficial when paired with QSBS and liquidity.
Making less money isn't really the risky part about founding a startup. The risky part is missing out on years of other life experiences, stressing (or losing) your closest personal relationships, failing and feeling personally responsible for disappointing everyone you convinced to believe in you, and developing an anxiety disorder (or worse) from chronic long-term stress. Author's suggestion that they could have ta…
You get Founder Liquidity because you managed to convince people who do just as much work that they couldn’t do just as much work without you. LOL I am so cynical.
Generally they make more decisions that directly effect the odds of the company existing 6 months or a year down the line than the average employee does (with some exceptions obviously).
You can still be cynical, I think all employees should be given the ability to get liquidity early, but it's not like it's totally unjustifiable.
The title of the article is mostly clickbait. Anyone who's lived in SV for a decade or so knows this well. Startups are a scam unless you are a founder. They are a meat grinder that runs on naive young new college grads who buy into the bullshit that their options are worth anything.
Even founders get shafted in later rounds where they are diluted out of their voting rights because they can't raise the capital to maintain their share. The only people not getting scammed regularly are the VC.
I’d also push for allowing early exercise along with secondary sales restricted only by a short right-of-first-refusal period.
> allowing early exercise along with secondary sales restricted only by a short right-of-first-refusal period Do you mean cashless exercise?
Early exercise (yep, 83b in the US) when options are issued then allowing employees to sell shares down the road, outside of fundraising events (Forge, EquityZen, sales to angel SPVs, etc.).
Founder liquidity doesn’t make up for much in the average situation. Making $400k after making $100k for 4 years doesn’t really change much. It gets you upto junior engineer level. The underestimated play is becoming a cofounder to a great CEO 2nd time founder.