A founder should know those things cold. Also all compensation promised you during interviews should be in place within 60 days of joining. I've seen companie

A founder should know those things cold. Also all compensation promised you during interviews should be in place within 60 days of joining. I've seen companies drag their feet for months, only to come up with an option plan significantly worse than the deal that was pitched to you (which the founders and early employees got. And thus you should have got, but they decided to be greedy, and then it took 6 months to come up with a plan.) "There is only a single liquidation preference" - that's not ideal, but it's ok. "I think there's just one liquidation preference" - that means there are probably two, only one of which is called an LP, and the guy doesn't know terms well enough to avoid getting screwed in a liquidity event. Of course all of this is less significant than the analysis of whether you think there ever will be a liquidity event or not... but having been around a couple decades and gone thru a couple of them, the founders made out well, even though they got screwed, and the employees didn't make a good risk adjusted return on what they gave up. Of course, I didn't work for any unicorns. In that case the results are much better. Problem is that options plans and even employe compensation plans at startups are built to only make sense assuming the company is a unicorn. Most startups are not unicorns.