As a founder who has gone from seed to IPO we have never intentionally employed this strategy for non executive hires. We also allowed liquidity at each fundin

As a founder who has gone from seed to IPO we have never intentionally employed this strategy for non executive hires. We also allowed liquidity at each funding round. A lot of the reason the system is setup how it is is due to IRS tax rules that make it very hard to give equity at the later stages of a company. If you just give shares then the employees will have a tax bill day one on an illiquid security. Workarounds are complicated, and things like this are the result. I think Bolt’s issues are more due to arrogance than malice.