> employee equity in particular in startups isn't really as unambiguous as the term suggests. Given how many startups die out you may as well interpret it as a

> employee equity in particular in startups isn't really as unambiguous as the term suggests. Given how many startups die out you may as well interpret it as a creative way for company owners to shift risk on employees. After all, the failing startup is the norm, by a huge margin. The modal startup company fails and any equity grants or options are worth nothing. The modal employee of a company that is extremely liberal with equity because it was a startup before it found product market fit is AppAmaGooBookSoft, Oracle, Stripe or Uber. AppAmaGooBookSoft must hire at least 50,000 software engineers a year between them. YC may have funded that many founders in its entire history. Possibly over YC’s entire history all the startups whose equity went to zero have had 500,000 employees though that seems high. Google alone has over 100,000 employees right now. If AppAmaGooBookSoft don’t have half a million employees who get substantial portions of their compensation in stock right now I’ll be very surprised.