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This is good stuff. I want to emphasize one point. A company may offer you options, or restricted stock units, or any sort of equity in the company. When the

This is good stuff. I want to emphasize one point. A company may offer you options, or restricted stock units, or any sort of equity in the company. When they do this, they are asking you to invest in the company. They are asking you to buy your shares with your scarcest resource: time. Do NOT be the slightest bit embarrassed to ask any question you want about the company's capital situation, funding prospects, premoney valuation at the last funding round, amount of "runway" left before they need revenue or another round of funding, names of major shareholders, preferred shares outstanding, etc. Warren Buffett would ask lots of questions if they asked him to invest; so should you. Mr. Buffett probably would ask better questions, but that's OK. The company should encourage questions from YOU: they're asking YOU to invest. If they bristle at your questions, it's a red flag. They may say, "look, that's confidential, can't answer specifically," and that's OK. But they shouldn't get annoyed. And, remember, you can't pay your rent or buy groceries with unvested options. You need cash money for that.

jiveturkey 8y ago
> And, remember, you can't pay your rent or buy groceries with unvested options. You need cash money for that. You can't pay your rent or buy groceries with vested options either.
- walshemj 8y ago
  You can leverage it in salary negations i.e. I have options on xxxx £1 shares of a private company which would only sell out at say 30x 40x. Then again the UK is saner when it comes to employee shares - and I am lucky that I have EMI options - which are taxed at 10% CGT and 0 income tax.
MuppetMaster42 8y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with your last point. At my last company they had no equity going in, and added it on Jan 1st a year later. When I spoke to the founders about raises for the engineering team, the CTO looked at me funny. "we just gave everyone stock options, why do they need a raise?" Why? Because a few of the engineers had young kids that were just starting school, and equity on a 1 year cliff won't pay those fees. Because in Sydney there are enough start-ups that any one of the engineers could get an offer for 10-50% more base salary with options on top. The founders were genuinely great guys, but they couldn't see the wood for the trees.

jiveturkey 8y ago

> And, remember, you can't pay your rent or buy groceries with unvested options. You need cash money for that. You can't pay your rent or buy groceries with vested options either.

walshemj 8y ago
You can leverage it in salary negations i.e. I have options on xxxx £1 shares of a private company which would only sell out at say 30x 40x. Then again the UK is saner when it comes to employee shares - and I am lucky that I have EMI options - which are taxed at 10% CGT and 0 income tax.

MuppetMaster42 8y ago

I agree wholeheartedly with your last point. At my last company they had no equity going in, and added it on Jan 1st a year later. When I spoke to the founders about raises for the engineering team, the CTO looked at me funny. "we just gave everyone stock options, why do they need a raise?" Why? Because a few of the engineers had young kids that were just starting school, and equity on a 1 year cliff won't pay those fees. Because in Sydney there are enough start-ups that any one of the engineers could get an offer for 10-50% more base salary with options on top. The founders were genuinely great guys, but they couldn't see the wood for the trees.