VCs have learned not to give the gains of early employees' hard work back to them. It leaves money on the table that could have gone to the VCs. The idea is th

VCs have learned not to give the gains of early employees' hard work back to them. It leaves money on the table that could have gone to the VCs. The idea is that it's bad because the employees might leave if you reward them with a lot of money. But if you screw them out of a lot of money (when the startup gets acquired, aka the traditional exit event that generated employee rewards), they're even more likely to leave. The argument that the IP remaining in the startup is useless if the employees leave is ridiculous, because if that is the case, then the valuable asset is not the IP, but the employees themselves. The undesirability of vesting acceleration is thus generally limited to the VC-funded tech community, as it is otherwise considered a desirable benefit everywhere else.