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Yeah, there's also general morale among the rank and file. Everyone's locked up for six months (except a few directors who are selling into the greenshoe). Yo
by mason55 7y ago
Yeah, there's also general morale among the rank and file.
Everyone's locked up for six months (except a few directors who are selling into the greenshoe). You can tell people to not even look at or think about the price for six months but human nature is what it is. Everyone's going to look at the IPO price and mentally anchor that as the minimum that they'll be able to cash out their options for. Most people will mentally come up with a range of IPO price as the min and some much larger price as the max.
To have the price immediately start dropping like this is not great for employee morale.
- duderific 7y agoBut isn't it likely that their strike price is much, much lower than the current price? If so, it's probably not that bad if the stock is down even 20% when they are able to sell. Obviously it's better if the stock price is higher, but it's not like they're going to be selling at a loss.
- sgk284 7y agoEh... Uber gave me a job offer in October 2019 claiming an internal valuation of $120B. I found it to be completely unjustified and passed on the job, but I'm certain many others bought it hook, line, and sinker. There were some really incredulous claims around the TAM of Uber Eats (and other efforts) that were proven outrageous in the S-1 filing.
- carlosdp 7y agoI don't think they can just do that with ISOs? Pretty sure the valuation has to be audited iirc
- sgk284 7y agoThe 409A valuation was $70B or whatever, but they were selling the equity as though it was already worth 70% more than the paper value. (Hence the distinction between their "internal valuation" and the 409A). It was super sketchy. Basically trying to argue that the offer they were giving me was already worth a ton more than it was.
- SilasX 7y agoI think (hope) you mean October 2018, and aren't time traveling.
- sgk284 7y agoNope. It was October 2019! The paper valuation was whatever their last raise was (~$70B or whatever), but they were sandbagging on the equity and framing it as being worth far more than it was on paper.
- SilasX 7y agoProbably not for anyone who joined around 2016 or later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880249
- sk5t 7y agoThe execs can't, like, force the underwriters to exercise the greenshoe, so they'll be stuck holding the bag until the price rises above the IPO price, in that regard.