Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 207 posts

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#111

Post by Eridrus »

hellskitchendev wrote: post #91

I don't know of anyone personally who got an exit like that but I do know companies are staying private longer nowadays. This can increase the risk for employees. EquityZen (where I work) is trying to make it easier for employees to exit before their company has an liquidity event. This blog post explores Fab and Aereo and how a big exit is not always guaranteed: https://equityzen.com/blog/learning-from-fab-and-aereo…

Do you guys have any data on what Series A -> Exit dilution looks like for regular employees>

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#112

Post by brudgers »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

Well in January of '95 I sold 1000 shares of Sun Stock that I had accumulated over the employee purchase program the previous few years. Sure it was only $35,000, this allowed me to purchase a car for cash rather than get a loan on it. When I sold the car in '99 to a used car dealer I realized the same 1000 shares, 4 years later were worth $1.6M. Granted at 1995 it wasn't a start-up any more, but it is an easy counte…

Just shows right place and right time are necessary but not sufficient conditions. Still need right decisions...and when it comes to picking stock trajectories, that largely correlates with luck or insider knowledge for ordinary mortals.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#113

Post by aetherson »

Eridrus wrote: post #107
aetherson wrote: post #9

I was employee, like, #1,000 or so for NetSuite -- hired as a QA engineer and eventually moved over to development. I was hired I think about two years before it went public, and stayed for six years overall. My equity came out to about $300k. Which I know does not hit the thresholds that you put in the post, but clearly many of my coworkers who came in earlier and were more senior -- but still not founders nor part…

Would you mind disclosing at what stage of the process you got your initial grant, and how much that grant was diluted along the way to the IPO?

I don't mind disclosing but I don't really know. This was almost 9 years ago at this point, and my memory is hazy, plus I was pretty naïve about all of this crap back then.

I definitely had at least one dilution event. Could that have been concurrent with the actual IPO? I want to say that I lost like 1/3rd of the ownership share of my stock, but honestly that could be total fabrication at this point, please don't bank on it.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#115

Post by BadCookie »

honestfeedback wrote: post #96

I spent ~3 years at Twitter (2010-2013) as an engineer and manager. Made a competitive salary while there. Left with almost $2m in equity (ISOs + RSUs). I sold the bulk of my position quickly due to serious concerns about tying the bulk of my net worth to a single company's future. After strike price, AMT, and income tax I ended up with roughly $1m in cash. Probably could have been closer to $1.2m if I knew what I wa…

Stories like this one make me feel foolish. I recall not applying to Twitter in 2008 partly because I thought that they were already too successful and famous for the equity to be worth much. Clearly, I was mistaken. (It is a small comfort that I probably would not have received an offer anyway, due to my skills and experience level not being a great match for the open positions that they had at that time.)

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#116

Post by fastaccount »

I was approximately employee #500 at Facebook (mid-level engineer), sold the stock pretty quickly after the IPO lockup ended. I left after 3.5 years. I came out with around $2.5m after taxes.

If I had sold at an optimal time, and fully vested. I would have around $4.5m. Almost everyone I know waited the full 4 years, but most did not wait for the stock to appreciate due to fear of concentrated holdings.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#117

Post by Eridrus »

employee_equity wrote: post #61

I joined a company in the summer of 2011 that IPOed in the spring of 2012. Company was under 400 employees at the time (I was around #~380). The company is not Facebook or Twitter. My pre-IPO grants alone were worth over 1.5M, and my subsequent RSU grants probably added another 1M on top of that. I'm using a throwaway account for obvious reasons, but happy to answer any questions. I definitely was not an outlier in t…

I'm not sure if this question is really applicable since you weren't there for very long before the IPO, but do you know what the Series A -> IPO dilution of shares looked like?

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#118

Post by strlen »

_abattoir wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #16

Yes, my first startup job got me into the high end of that range, as employee #5, with a relatively small acquisition. I know several people who took home much more from employee roles (albeit in larger acquisitions) in the recent past. A lot of it has to do with who you work with. In every case I can think of, windfall money for employees came from founders with a track record of accomplishing that (or, in my case,…

Right, PG's advice is not useful for all founders, just the 1 out of every 10 that makes it big. The others are supposed to nut up and get over it. His advice does, however, benefit every venture capitalist.

> Right, PG's advice is not useful for all founders, just the 1 out of every 10 that makes it big. The others are supposed to nut up and get over it.

Quite contrary, the opposite is true: the "1 out of every 10" companies you hear about are the companies where founders resisted opportunities to sell early, which grew to a size where millionaires continued to be minted even after the IPO.

Some VCs have even refused to permit early sales that would have made the founders comfortable (i.e., 1-5mm per founder): while top-tier VCs _won't_ do that (that would make founders who have their pick of VCs be reluctant about accepting their funding), it's probably not the best idea in the world to take substantial amount of VC funding without even considering the possibility of building a public company.

There's a lot that one can accuse pg of, but pushing founders to take long odds to make VCs rich is not one of them.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#119

Post by porter »

abstractbill wrote: post #105

I was the first employee at Twitch, back in 2007. It worked out very well for me, but - having watched the sausage get made - I'm very aware of how incredibly lucky I've been. It could very easily have all come to nothing. To be honest it's not something I'd ever advise someone to do, even though it did happen to work out for me. I'd advise most people to join one of the big giants and enjoy a predictably comfortable…

What does "worked out very well" mean? Also, what do you mean by watching the sausage get made? Not sure I follow.

Re: Any stories of employees with equity successfully taking home over $1m? $500k?

#120

Post by Eridrus »

limeyx wrote: post #52

Yes, again above the high end of that. Employee ~65 of a startup that raised very little money and IPO'd for over $1BN (over ten years ago now though ... )

Would you mind disclosing at what stage of the process you got your initial grant, and how much that grant was diluted along the way to IPO?
Post reply on HN