synacq · HackerTrans

5 лет назадdiscuss

The article shared by Johnny555 is a good breakdown of the mechanics. Speaking to my own experience, my ballpark estimate is that I received an order of magnitude less money than I would have had I received my initial grant as a percentage of the final sale price. Pennies is hyperbole, but the amount I received from the 9 figure acquisition was thousands of dollars (instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars based on my original grant).

synacq

5 лет назадdiscuss

Most stock options will turn out worthless, or at least, worth less than the opportunity cost of joining the startup, even following a successful acquisition. If you're a very early employee and the company goes on to be very successful, you can get rich, but the prospect of that is very slim. That is not to say that options aren't worth negotiating, definitely maximise your grant, but do not associate a good grant with a good outcome.

After dilution, preferences, taxes, you're going to need there to be an exit worth many hundreds of millions to provide you with retirement money as an early employee. Options mostly serve to benefit the company -- they're golden handcuffs.

If you think the company has a very real path to an exit of 500m or more, you're joining early and you're willing to stay with them until their exit -- which, for an early stage startup, that could be 5 - 10 years -- you could probably retire...

As you can tell, I've been through multiple acquisitions (incl. a 9 figure acquisition) and made pennies.

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