5 ms·
The post is from April.
by beervirus 5y ago
The post is from April.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rvz 5y ago...in (2017) before leaving GitLab. Tomorrow on the 14th of October 2021, GitLab is going to the public markets and will be priced around $60 - $66 a share. So this person threw away his $1m worth of stock options because of GitLab's culture. Oh dear.
- compiler-guy 5y agoThat's easy to say in hindsight, but most startups fail.
- bpodgursky 5y agoEhhh but... $4,000 to exercise the shares? You have to be REALLY REALLY confident a startup is going to 100% no-soft-exit fail to not take that bet, given the vastly positive payout even an acquihire exit would give, given how cheap that strike price is.
- plorkyeran 5y ago$4,000 to exercise and $250,000 in taxes on shares that they wouldn't be able to sell for another four years. The AMT heavily punishes exercising options in pre-IPO companies.
- bpodgursky 5y agoIn 2017 when making this choice, presumably the FMV would not have been anything close to what it is now, and there's little to no issue with AMT.
- calvinlh 5y ago$4000 to exercise, but a lot more in taxes. Given that his shares were worth about 1/6 of what they are now, and assuming the FMV for tax purposes was about 1/3 that, he would have to pay income tax on $60k worth of paper gains. That's an additional 20-30k depending on the state.
- edouard-harris 5y agoMost startups aren't valued at $1.5 billion, which GitLab was at the time this article was written. Once a startup reaches that valuation, it's already been mostly de-risked.
- almost_usual 5y agoNot hard to make that at a FAANG org with RSUs in 4 years. If they had vested the entire amount that would be have been a decent exit.
- outworlder 5y ago_sigh_
- Closi 5y agoAny way you slice it it's a million dollars. 4 times your annual salary in one lump payment is a life-changing sum of money for most people.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]