In this context companies aren’t a pinky swear “I promise this has value”. A 10x valuation increase for a private company happens for a reason: for VC funded st

In this context companies aren’t a pinky swear “I promise this has value”. A 10x valuation increase for a private company happens for a reason: for VC funded start ups that is often because they did an up round. Someone else put a lot more money on the line than an employee exercising their options would. I agree with you the current rules kind of suck for employees at start ups increasing in value, but framing values as just made up is overly reductive.