There's a difference in options and shares. Option value is based on lots of things like strike price, time to maturity, volatility and price of the underlying

There's a difference in options and shares. Option value is based on lots of things like strike price, time to maturity, volatility and price of the underlying stock,etc. If a stock is 100% guaranteed never to exceed the strike price its options are worthless. If no one can buy the option from you it is worth significantly less. Many startups give options that are so far out of the money they are worthless. They will give you Options on 10k shares that you'll never be able to exercise so it may as well be 100k. Options don't represent an equity position in the company. Percent of the company is meaningless anyway because companies will never give more than a small fraction of a percent.