341–350 of 413 posts
My thoughts on options are pretty much identical except I would say "worthless" no "worth less". I would also add that with an option position you are most likely giving up a higher salary and the opportunity cost that comes with it. An extra 30K each year invested at 5% in 5 years is worth more than 200K lump sum in 5 years (200K discounted at 5% for 5 years is $157K). You also have to factor in the probability of a…
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The latest shitty clause that Valley companies are including in their options contract prohibits you from selling fully vested and exercised shares even if you have a willing buyer . Apparently companies saw all the employees getting rich from private companies like Palantir and Facebook pre-IPO and considered that a problem to be solved. Check your contract, you probably don't "own" the stock you think you do.
Yes, it was a problem to be solved for several reasons: 1) 409A (option pricing) valuation problems 2) Increase in # of shareholder problems 3) Legal issues (for both the company and employee) if buyers of shares later felt deceived by sellers 4) Team cohesion issues if different employees were getting radically different prices for there sales You might disagree with the solution, but these are definitely real probl…
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I think it's more along the lines of "the old way we used to value and award options/equity isn't very compelling for employees these days. We need to think of better ways to give employees ownership." That's a real problem for people trying to start a company without a lot of cash. If it's to be useful as compensation, equity should be valuable, but it's not because the payout is so uncertain and so far away. Throw…
If that is the problem, to make it more compelling, then you're simply advocating a pay raise. Equity is called compensation but anyone who is working at their second startup should understand that calling that is misleading at best. Since the average tenure at the 'first startup' is about 2 years, consider it a 'masters program' in learning about what is and what is not compensation. So if you're going to take equit…
The realization of the ideal that you can just get a percentage of the company for putting in your time working hard is largely elusive. I think that is the problem to solve. I'm not terribly optimistic there is a way to solve it outside of "don't give as much equity since nobody wants it", but I like to think there are smarter folks out there who can come up with something.
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not as nuanced as all that as an employee, if you are lucky/skilled enough to end up at a successful startup, and you aren't very careful with tax issues, you can find yourself stuck: if you leave, you have to exercise, and immediately owe hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more!) on a completely illiquid asset that you can't sell. Which doesn't even take into account the potential for that asset to become less val…
That is certainly one point of view. And if one person leaves it's not likely to materially affect the business as everyone else keeps it going. Another point of view is that if all the early employees disappear at the 4 year mark (or whenever they feel they've vested "enough") that could cause very serious problems for the business. There is an element of a prisoner's dilemma here and it's not unreasonable to think…
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It's very easy for shares in a liquid-seeming exit to be worth nothing, even with no shenanigans. For instance: raise a B round, and then sell for low 8 figures. Liquidation preferences will wipe out most of the outcome. People lose perspective about this, because they only see the final number (and the "employee shares worth 0"), but if you raise 20MM and then sell for 20MM, it's not hard to see why the shares aren'…
Actually, it is hard. Why are the employees the only ones that have to take it on the chin?
I don't know how strictly true that is in most cases, but it's a factor worth considering.
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And just to see if I understand correctly, if you exercise on vest, you have an extra $25 of taxable income over the four years, but then $25 less at year 5? There is no sense in which you have more taxable income; its distribution over time has merely changed.
Actually your taxable income in the second case is less because you made less money. :)
I think lot of these idiosyncrasy stems for arcane SEC rules like 500 investors and restrictions on IPOs. Startups and tech community should lobby to change all these. Why can't we have full fledged public exchange where anyone, any startup can come in and sell its stock with no restrictions at all. If people want to buy in to their vision, sure let them be. Lot of rules around IPO and SEC are placed to protect the g…
It's not like the current system stops people from being gamed, but any of these types of systems are bound to be exploited by the "evils". Cartels are formed in the shadows, markets are manipulated. I love the idea of a public market as an official process, but I'm not sure if it can be done without the system becoming polluted.
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> I'd work my ass off without options, but the options really make it easy to say "I will do everything in my power to make this succeed" instead of "I'd rather go spend time with my friends tonight" Just curious: are you under 25? Not meant as ad hominem -- I know tons of engineers who have this attitude from 22-25, but the closer I get to 30 the more I realize on a deep level that I'm going to die someday and I hav…
Definitely not under 25. I've built startups for many people over the years (both as full time as a consultant/contractor), and at this point look at work on someone else's idea as dollars first, equity is gravy. Why? Early engineers take a hit on salary and any equity stake is quickly diluted. It is pretty common for engineers post series-A to potentially end up with a higher equity stake than someone that came in a…
Also to everyone else if a founder wants to pay you a lot with equity, you have to wonder how confident he or she is in long term value. If they really are going to be worth so much, why aren't they clutching those shares more tightly and throwing cash at you instead?
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Here's the ground truth: if you build a company with someone else's money, they're going to get a huge chunk of the upside, and the original management is going to retain control only as long as they hit their numbers. Hopefully, nobody is saying employees shouldn't be wary of VC funded companies. They definitely should.
Why? When did simply having money become more valuable than actually doing the work?