> In both cases you will have a vesting schedule, just in the case of restricted stock it's usually a grant of the shares with no exercise price. In practice,

> In both cases you will have a vesting schedule, just in the case of restricted stock it's usually a grant of the shares with no exercise price. In practice, there are huge differences between them. Generally stock is much friendlier to employees and signals a company/founder which actually values employee ownership. I'm surprised by the number of companies which try to pull shady stuff like not sharing the exercise price for options that are part of an offer. Lots of people apparently think that employees should value options at a substantially higher value than investors do. I've seen cases where the gap between the 409a price and the last investment is only a few thousand dollars, while the company insists this somehow makes up for a substantially subpar salary. Equity is a risk, yes, but the status quo is that the risk falls much more on the people least able to bear it. Investors get all sorts of protections, while employees only benefit in a very narrow set of outcomes.