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Congrats to the founders for not taking much funding but for employees... this has to suck unless they get to sell their shares to Sequoia as well. (If they eve
by bradlys 6y ago
Congrats to the founders for not taking much funding but for employees... this has to suck unless they get to sell their shares to Sequoia as well. (If they even got any options...) Maybe they don't compete for SV talent and most employees aren't used to even getting options as part of compensation.
Is there a specific reason a company would have IPO in mind but wouldn't say they are looking to do an IPO eventually? Is there a particular reason to say that?
- matthewheath 6y agoI believe only a few of the original Zapier folks have options (I don't hold any myself, for example but I joined when they were around 70 people).
- propter_hoc 6y agoReally? Only cash comp?
- jcomis 6y agoYes
- sjg007 6y agoSo without options, why did you join?
- matthewheath 6y agoI'm in the UK where options as part of job compensation are relatively rare. I joined as a contractor originally so wouldn't have been entitled to them regardless, but also they're a US company and only recently (1 year ago) set up a UK entity (I don't have options in that either) so I wasn't surprised to not get any. I don't fully understand options, admittedly. I joined because I love their product, and I needed a better paying job than the one I had originally. Plus, the culture was pretty amazing at the time I joined! I left because they didn't pay me enough in the end plus cultural issues :P so I've got a new job paying more with a culture I prefer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ralph84 6y agoWow, this should be the headline. Bootstrapped unicorns are somewhat rare. But bootstrapped unicorns with no employee equity is a whole other level.
- matthewheath 6y agoTo be fair to them, they do a pretty decent profit share every year. It is compensation based, so it's nothing life-changing (only say, 5-10% of your total compensation) but it was nice! First and only place I've ever participated in profit sharing.
- ng12 6y agoUnless they're paying massive base salaries that sounds pretty low compared to RSUs at a big tech co or the yearly bonus in finance.
- matthewheath 6y agoI don't know what qualifies as "massive base salaries" but most folks in Support (the team I worked on) were on around $70k+ USD base compensation. Profit sharing happened twice a year, but I don't remember it ever going above 10% of your six-monthly compensation rate (so effectively, you got 20% at most).
- ghiculescu 6y agoMost people would prefer to be paid a good salary for doing good work, rather than uncertain lottery tickets and an obligation to understand how they work. I think most companies would prefer to operate this way, too.
- bradlys 6y agoOnce companies start paying $500k-1mil/yr liquid - fine. But as it stands, I make a lot of money off those "uncertain" lottery tickets and demand a lot of them wherever I go.
- cosmodisk 6y agoThis is mostly a US only thing, outside of it there are very few places where this would even be an option.
- bradlys 6y agoSure but this company is headquartered and (mostly) founded in San Francisco. So... stock options from such a company would be standard as far as location go.
- disiplus 6y agoafaik zappier is mostly remote
- RA_Fisher 6y agoIt’s a very powerful way to align incentives. It results in a major reduction in political arguments and a major increase in productivity. It’s a long-term incentive, so it causes employees to take good risks for the customer even if they won’t be apparent today. Stock is literal ownership and it eases “ownership problems” proportionate to the meaningfulness of the expected value of the stock to the employeee-owner. It’s a powerful tool for increasing teamwork.
- momo_O 6y ago