5/10 stock is great and all but, have any of you ever been told how
many outstanding shares there are out there when you were discussing
stock options? I've worked at 5 startups now, and haven't been
able to get a straight answer out of anyone, ever. bunch of weasels.
\_ http://www.paulgraham.com/angelinvesting.html
\_ If you haven't gone public yet then the staight answer isn't really
useful anyway because there will be more shared issued along the way.
Unless you have a controlling interest they could just dilute you
out of most of your equity anyway.
\_ I only knew to ask at the last two I worked at and yes, at both of
them they were willing to tell me how many shares were outstanding.
As the previous poster indicates though, both were diluted before
their eventual IPO.
\_ I've usually been able to find out, it is always a pain. (You are
best off getting this info when you first accept an offer with
shares). And yes you will get diluted, but to say that it isn't
really useful to know the number is just plain wrong. It is very
easy to give some dumb engineer 10 million shares and issue 900
trillion shares. Diluting affects everyone, so there are interested
parties besides no-power employees involved. -phuqm
\_ The powerful parties are able to "un-dilute" themselves though.
\_ Only by ponying up more cash. Their original investments get
diluted.
\_ I have seen execs who are cozy with the board get offered
more shares in this case.
\_ That's true. You don't want to over-dilute your key
personnel.
\_ I'm beginning to think my company has no idea who
is really 'key' (everyone here is pretty key, but
there are probably a few people who are more key
than others). I just did some math and I have
calculated that my shares are worth about $10
a day to me at current prices. big whooooooooo
\_ I've never had any difficulty getting this information from any of
the startups I've worked for. This question should be asked when
you receive their job offer, and any company that won't answer this
question should be avoided. Yes you will get dilluted at each
round of funding (as more shares are issued), but it's also normal
for employees to receive additional option grants at that time to
compensate (though that still means the percentage of equity you're
vested into has been reduced by the round), and if management
doesn't bring it up the employees should.
\_ When I first got the offer of my current job, the CEO actually told me
my options as a percentage of all outstanding shares, not as number of
shares. I didn't know the number of shares until I signed the offer
letter.
\_ Was your CEO 24 years old?
\_ No. I think he's in his 40s.
\_ I graduated in 2000, just before the bubble burst, and every company
(except Trilogy, which is just wacky) offered up the percentage
right off the bat. Only one was a little elusive, but they gave it.
Since then, I've only worked for the public sector or public co's.
\_ why only public co + sector? soured experience? need to pay
mortgage and/or kid + wife?
\_ the public sector was because I considered going into
education and was burned out from the startup. The public
company is doing quite well and has interesting work. I'm
still a bit startup adverse after the first one. No wife,
mortgage or kids.
\_ could you tell us about the bad experience you have?
I'm thinking of doing the reverse. I'm bored with a
20K+ company. I really dislike it.
\_ I have worked at three startups and they all had these
things in common: chaotic, unstructured work environment,
lots of things just "don't work" and you end up fixing
yourself or doing without (like copy machines, phones,
your work station, etc), long hours, inexperienced (and
therefore widely varying in quality) management. If you
can handle these, you might be okay. A bad startup will
have all these, but more pathologies, usually related
to whatever issues the founder has.
\_ he wasn't the previous poster, but that sums it up
pretty nicely. Another way to think about it is that
NPV(startup) < NPV(public company)
but the startup has >std dev so chance of options
being worth >$1M is higher at the startup.
\_ I hear we're going for a 'liquidity event'. Shoud I hold my
breathe until i turn blue, to get more stock?
\_ You won't get more stock at a liquidity event. You'll probably
just get diluted more. You should
1) Stay employed and content (and bitch on motd) or
2) Ask for more stock while looking for a new job
if you go for #2, you need to lay out your case well. Come up
with a list of all the important projects you worked on last year
as well as your domain knowledge and expertise that makes you an
invaluable member of the engineering team. So focus on how good
you are, not how shitty your compensation is. AFTER you get to an
agreement about how awesome you are, you can bring up an argument
agreement about how awesome you are, you can make an argument RE:
how you feel like you should be rewarded and given greater
incentives to stay and help the company grow/liquidate.
\_ Every company I've asked this of has been up front about it. -dans |
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