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"1. Take the least amount of stock possible is not a good generally-applicable rule. It might have worked for you in the past, but it sure wouldn't have worked
by acheron 14y ago
"1. Take the least amount of stock possible is not a good generally-applicable rule. It might have worked for you in the past, but it sure wouldn't have worked well for any of the employees of Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Weebly, etc."
And for the people who won the Powerball, "Don't buy lottery tickets" wouldn't have worked well for them. That doesn't mean "Don't buy lottery tickets" isn't a good generally-applicable rule.
Cashing out big on your startup might not be quite as rare as winning the Powerball, but it's still awfully unlikely.
- drusenko 14y agoWe're talking maybe 1 in 50 versus 1 in 175,000,000 so yes, the comparison to the lottery is useless.
- whazzmaster 14y agoCashing out big is a 1 in 50 proposition? Wow! Source?
- baak 14y ago1 in 50 seems... very, very optimistic. On top of that, the investment is higher than the lottery. The lottery costs you $1. This costs you ~$10-20k in salary, and possibly more in lost opportunities and time you would've had elsewhere.
- drusenko 14y agoNot at all. From my comment above: ---- Since there's a lot of assertion and not much data here, let's bring some in. After some quick research, this Quora article seemed to have some useful statistics: http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-startups-fail http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-of-10-st... In short, 13% of VC-backed startups exit for over $10M, 5% exit for over $50M, and 2% exit for over $100M, which is what I'd call significant. ---- Besides, there are a lot of startup opportunities that pay market, so you aren't "investing" anything in the equity, it's a bonus over what you'd get paid elsewhere.