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Many exits and acquisitions are essentially zero for employees. They might be slight bonuses, but it would be a rounding error on salary in many cases. Think o

Many exits and acquisitions are essentially zero for employees. They might be slight bonuses, but it would be a rounding error on salary in many cases. Think of it like expected value of the stock. IPO is contributing to the lionshare of expected value, even if it is the least likely outcome. That said, the basis of judgement of value is on how much of the company you have. It all starts there. Also, I completely agree about probing what is in it for the founders. What is their goal? Unfortunately, it isn't unethical to bend the truth and project a vision deep into the future. People call that leadership.

birken 12y ago
But IPOs are essentially zero too. If I took a sample of 100 startup employees, the number who have made any significant money in an IPO is way below 1. The fact that the fraction of a person made a really huge amount of money doesn't matter if we are talking about the decision making process of these 100 people. I'm just saying the whole thing is very arbitrary in acquisition, IPO, or whatever. I agree that you should know how many shares are out there, if you think you are getting 1% and you are getting 0.1%, that is a big difference. But if one startup is offering you 0.8% and another is offering you 0.1%, how the hell do you know which is a better offer? You don't. Salary is very comparable and money is practically useful. Worry about that. Maybe you can estimate if something has a big enough market that it could IPO, do that. But you can't predict success. Look how bad investors are at it.