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The reason for the opacity is obvious, they want you to think the equity is worth more than it is. People constantly assume good faith in these things when the

The reason for the opacity is obvious, they want you to think the equity is worth more than it is. People constantly assume good faith in these things when they shouldn’t. Obviously number of outstanding shares is a bare minimum, but things like cash reserves and cash flow should also be shared but they don’t want to share that information, often times because it’s not good, they just wasn’t people who believe in the “mission” or that it’s a rocketship or whatever. The secondary reason is that there are still too many naive engineers who assume good faith, drink the startup koolaid, and take these offers . Sometimes even declining public RSU grants to do so. One company out of ten thousand have ISOs that are worth anything but those are the only company in the headlines so the mystique continues. The only solution is education. ISO (Incentive Stock Options) are one of the biggest scams of all time and you’re financially illiterate if you value them more than zero. They are carefully designed by venture capitalists to screw employees. NFTs of monkey pictures are infinitely stronger financial assets than startup ISO - I mean, as least the monkey jpegs have liquidity and volume, and no liquidation preference coded in to screw you over.

otterley 4y ago
> ISO (Incentive Stock Options) are one of the biggest scams of all time and you’re financially illiterate if you value them more than zero. They are carefully designed by venture capitalists to screw employees Given the number of millionaires and billionaires who can credit ISOs for their current wealth, I think that's too broad a statement. At the end of the day, a well-run company that can eventually go public because they have a strong business can be worth joining and the ISOs can be worth something someday. Admittedly, many will not, but if you pick the right one, you could do well.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Survivorship Bias at its finest. You don’t hear about the other 90%+ who got absolutely nothing.
  - otterley 4y ago
    > Admittedly, many will not
- krasicki 4y ago
  You mean, "there's a chance".
blagie 4y ago
That's the thing, though. It's not always a scam. You never know whether you're being scammed. I /didn't/ get scammed, but everyone working at my first company out of school thought we /would/ get scammed. We've all seen a lot of people get scammed.
- stavros 4y ago
  Not everyone in a pyramid scheme loses money, but that doesn't make it not a scam.
MAGZine 4y ago
ISOs worked out well for me. It wasn't a huge windfall, but the preferential tax treatment is actually quite nice. Really the best strategy is ISOs that convert to NSOs with 10y exercise windows when you leave. best of both worlds.

otterley 4y ago

> ISO (Incentive Stock Options) are one of the biggest scams of all time and you’re financially illiterate if you value them more than zero. They are carefully designed by venture capitalists to screw employees Given the number of millionaires and billionaires who can credit ISOs for their current wealth, I think that's too broad a statement. At the end of the day, a well-run company that can eventually go public because they have a strong business can be worth joining and the ISOs can be worth something someday. Admittedly, many will not, but if you pick the right one, you could do well.

scarface74 4y ago
Survivorship Bias at its finest. You don’t hear about the other 90%+ who got absolutely nothing.
- otterley 4y ago
  > Admittedly, many will not
krasicki 4y ago
You mean, "there's a chance".

blagie 4y ago

That's the thing, though. It's not always a scam. You never know whether you're being scammed. I /didn't/ get scammed, but everyone working at my first company out of school thought we /would/ get scammed. We've all seen a lot of people get scammed.

stavros 4y ago
Not everyone in a pyramid scheme loses money, but that doesn't make it not a scam.

MAGZine 4y ago

ISOs worked out well for me. It wasn't a huge windfall, but the preferential tax treatment is actually quite nice. Really the best strategy is ISOs that convert to NSOs with 10y exercise windows when you leave. best of both worlds.