Live data from Hacker News

Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

twitter.com

11–20 of 553 posts

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#11

Not much of a story here. The guy got a better offer and he took it: > I was given an offer that would explode same day. I had to forfeit all of my vested shares earned over my 3.5+ years at Windsurf.

It's still pretty shocking to have to forfeit shares that have vested.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#14
post #12

I must be misunderstanding what he is saying, but I can't figure out what. Once his shares have vested, they are his. What entity forced him to sell his shares for 1% of what they are worth and how could they possibly do that?

Whichever entity ended up buying Windsurf, the corporation. They get to declare the exchange rate, and for what. Sometimes it's cash, sometimes it's stock, usually it's some mix of both.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#17
post #12

I must be misunderstanding what he is saying, but I can't figure out what. Once his shares have vested, they are his. What entity forced him to sell his shares for 1% of what they are worth and how could they possibly do that?

Cognition made him a lightning offer it sounds like, valid one day only.

I think if I understand what he is saying he could either stick with the product and team giving up the shares, or keep the shares and try his luck getting money for them another way.

I appreciate that his choice shows that he is in it for the product and the team, but also ouch.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#19

Financially speaking, is it even worth joining a startup anymore? Compared to just going to any of the big companies. The latter will likely pay you more, with less risk involved. Seems like the best shot is to strive toward becoming financially independent, and then just go for the startup route and follow your passion. If you it doesn't work out, no big deal - if things turn out great, you'll just be even better of…

Has it been worth it in a while? This is a legitimate question as I am on the east coast and wonder if it differs from the west coast environment.

At least in my anecdotal experience, everytime I’ve entertained a startups offer in the past decade it’s been either something like engineer #1, 3% equity and no you cannot see the cap table or other agreements with investors, or something like 10k units at 25 a share when we’re on series z, and you lose them if you leave, and you can’t sell for 6 months if you leave, and the investors have priority on payment if we sell for less than our valuation and yadda yadda yadda.

I mentally just valued the equity as 0 in the compensation with all those limitations on liquidating them and never understood why anyone joined a startup

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#20

Financially speaking, is it even worth joining a startup anymore? Compared to just going to any of the big companies. The latter will likely pay you more, with less risk involved. Seems like the best shot is to strive toward becoming financially independent, and then just go for the startup route and follow your passion. If you it doesn't work out, no big deal - if things turn out great, you'll just be even better of…

Was there ever a time when you could reasonably expect to make more money by joining a startup? That has never been the case so far as I am aware, and I'm currently on my seventh tour through startup-land...
Post reply on HN