Scenario 3: the startup hasn't done a 409a pricing of its stock yet. They're committing $10k of RSUs at whatever the valuation ends up being. If it’s $10/share

Scenario 3: the startup hasn't done a 409a pricing of its stock yet. They're committing $10k of RSUs at whatever the valuation ends up being. If it’s $10/share then you receive 1000 RSUs. If it’s $5/share, then it’s 2000 RSUs. If $100/share, then 100 RSUs. You need to find out if they're literally granting $10,000 in stock to you, or if they’re waiting for a valuation and until then literally don’t know the number of shares. A dollar amount is not all that unusual…I received a grant equal to 25% of my income vesting over three years from an already public company. That is, they calculated the number of shares equal to 25% of my then income. That didn’t seem to be a lot but the stock split twice during the vesting period (this was in the 1990s) and ended up being a nice sum.