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Startup equity is just an at-the-money call option. Worth something but not a ton on day 1. Due to tax guidelines, companies are highly incentivized to grant e
by mifeng 10y ago
Startup equity is just an at-the-money call option. Worth something but not a ton on day 1.
Due to tax guidelines, companies are highly incentivized to grant employees options struck at the last 409A valuation price. For companies who have raised multiple institutional rounds, this is usually the last round's post money valuation. This number is essentially the market valuation for the company, so an employee option is just a security with a strike price at fair market value. It has value due to optionality but only due to that.
- hueving 10y ago>Startup equity is just an at-the-money call option. Worth something but not a ton on day 1. It's very different from an option that you can sell on the open market though. I would take an at the money call option (with an expiration years in the future) for any publicly traded company over a startup.
- traviscj 10y agoMaybe the stock market just needs to introduce a new "Martian Stock Option" (along with American and European) that has an expiration date of the company's choosing, to be decided at a future date, with a penalty for or prohibition against selling the option before some other future date. Then we can just let the day traders play this game for us, and see if they can make any sense of it.