LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

I really hate using LivingSocial/Groupon because it seems like the business owners always HATED taking these deals. I always feel like I'm being treated differently because I'm not paying the actual price. One time when I used one of these deals, I even heard the employee say to another employee "... another #$#@$#@ groupon deal....". If they didn't like people using the deals, why bother signing up for it?

I can't wait for these daily deal business to go away because I don't think it benefits anyone.

You seem to be saying to contradictory things:

"Equity is worthless, never work for equity, always demand cash up front."

"Those darn investors and founders keep all the equity for themselves and get rich off your back!"

You can't have it both ways. Either the equity is worthless or it isn't. Are the investors, who get no salary and only equity, even bigger suckers than the employees? What about the founders who usually take big paycuts when they start the company?

It seems like the real message here is "Make sure you get a BUNCH of equity" not "Don't take any equity at all". Which I can totally get behind. If you're an early employee at a startup, working for equity, make sure you're being compensated appropriately!

Perhaps I'm missing something here -- people criticize group deal sites for taking too much of the money in a deal (50% of the revenue). The marginal cost for LivingSocial on this is 0... why aren't they making tons of money? Where has the near $1 billion dollars gone?

It's unfair to characterize all startups as nirvana, and it's likewise unfair to label them all as run by evil masterminds taking advantage of their employees. Sure, some startups are total shit, others are actually pretty enjoyable places to work. So let's not paint this as either black or white.

You make some great points that a lot of "wide eyed" grads could use to hear more of. There are also a few things I take issue with.

About equity: one thing I make sure everyone I hire understands very clearly is that equity is not a sure thing. I have this same conversation on every phone call where I make a job offer: "Here is the percentage of the company you would get. Here is what we think it might be worth today based on realistic multiples of our revenues and profits. Here is what we think it might be worth in 3-4 years if we continue growing as quickly as we are today, you should think about and come up with your own expected value. It's very possible it will be worth nothing if things don't go well." I want people to value their equity, because I think it is and will be worth a lot, but I want them to go in with their eyes open, and understand there are no guarantees.

On the other points:

1. Take the least amount of stock possible is not a good generally-applicable rule. It might have worked for you in the past, but it sure wouldn't have worked well for any of the employees of Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Weebly, etc.

2. Technically correct, but a better way to look at it might be to figure out a current value and the chance of the stock being liquid and coming to an expected value. At least that recognizes some potential for value. If you think the chance of liquidity is very low, then your expected value could effectively be zero. It's probably not a good idea to work at a startup where the chance of liquidity is minuscule, anyway.

3. No, that would not work, because no one would accept one set that way. If you want to make it equally ridiculous, I could invent a valuation that I tell everyone, nobody is stopping me from doing that. A smarter bet would be to ask "What was your last funding round valuation?" or "What is the current 409A valuation?" These are valuations set by third parties. Sometimes VC valuations miss their mark, but at a minimum you know an intelligent third party believes they are going to make money at that valuation.

5. This is not true. The reason earlier employees receive more stock than later employees is that everyone is receiving the same dollar amount, but how much stock you get for that dollar amount changes. To keep it simple, if you are employee #1 and you get $100k of stock at a company valued at $10M, you get 1% of the company. Later, if you get $100k of stock valued at $100M, you get .1%, etc.

This makes a whole lot of sense: first, the company was super speculative and full of risk when the earliest employees joined. Then, their efforts directly contributed to the company being (much) more valuable. This was not a guaranteed process, they took on a lot of risk (things could have gone miserably south). They are rewarded for that risk when the company grows.

About founders being there earlier..... that is a pretty asinine argument. Maybe the founders shouldn't have been there and there wouldn't even be a company we are complaining about in the first place?

6. Don't take a pay cut to join a startup, then. Plenty of us (like Weebly) pay market or better. We don't expect you to work 100 hours a week, in fact we are happy with 40. What we do focus on is output, which some achieve in 40 productive hours, and it takes others 60. Any startup has sprints, but we try to be very cognizant of burn-out and follow up with vacation or more relaxed periods.

If you never want to take a pay cut, then join a startup with traction that's profitable or well-funded. If you want to add on some more risk (for potentially larger reward), then go take a pay cut at a brand new startup and play the game. It may or may not work out, but if it does, then you'll be one of those early guys with lots of stock that the OP is complaining about.

And the free food? What about just doing nice things? Am I automatically a sociopath in every thing I do? Honestly, the free food for us is just nice & convenient. It's a bonus that people tend to end up eating together, talking, getting to know each other better, etc.

We're trying to create a place where we want to work, and that drives a lot of our decisions, not some kind of sociopathic desire to extract another 30 minutes of work.