4 ms·

I'd just assume the company's already dead and someone's trying to suck some remaining value out of it or make a hail-mary acquisition deal to bail out their in

• cwilkes 4y ago
  > suck some remaining life out of it It’s almost as if the blog poster would have a vested interested in seeing a massive cut.
• CalChris 4y ago
  The CEO should be able to spreadsheet an argument at the all hands meeting to the remaining employees that they are now profitable and/or have 48 months of runway. Of course, employees are always unrestricted free agents. They can weigh this with the prevailing economic outlook and make their own decisions. Remember, YC's letter is to founders and not employees. I believe Ben Horowitz made a similar decision and a similar pitch to his employees that he recounted in The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I don't remember Horowitz getting into the depth of the cut but I remember survivability being a stressed point.
  • lumost 4y ago
    If your talking to employees who care at all about the supposed equity they were given, then you need to be prepared to reset the employee equity pool to be meaningful. In particular, many of the employees will have options that are obviously underwater. Any belief they had in dreams of billion dollar valuations will be gone.