3 ms·

If you're not willing to actually grant equity, then don't pretend to grant equity. Grant "up to $5M of go-public bonus cash" or something. If they had capped

• cheald 15y ago
  Bingo. It sounds like what they did is just hand out stock options way too liberally in the early days in order to attract talent (probably when they planned to flip the company on a timeframe before those shares could vest), and now that those shares turn out to be worth something, they want that talent, the product that talent has created, plus the compensation that they promised to pay returned to them. If you can't stomach the idea of a hire getting a big payday out of an IPO if your company goes big, you shouldn't be giving them equity. Using it as hiring bait and then switching it out from underneath them is deplorable.
  • muzz 15y ago
    If only unvested shares are being asked for... someone who has been there since the "early days" would have already vested most of them, assuming a standard 4-year vesting schedule
    • smokinn 15y ago
      Zynga was founded in July 2007 making it 4 years and 3 months old. It's likely that almost no one has fully vested yet unless they hired a lot in their first month.
• eavc 15y ago
  "Up to" language can be every bit as sleazy as this move to take stuff back. It usually means, "nowhere near."