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I was employee, like, #1,000 or so for NetSuite -- hired as a QA engineer and eventually moved over to development. I was hired I think about two years before

I was employee, like, #1,000 or so for NetSuite -- hired as a QA engineer and eventually moved over to development. I was hired I think about two years before it went public, and stayed for six years overall. My equity came out to about $300k. Which I know does not hit the thresholds that you put in the post, but clearly many of my coworkers who came in earlier and were more senior -- but still not founders nor part of the founding team -- did a lot better. EDIT: I should point out $300k was more or less actual. If I had been really good at selling at the top of the market, it would've been more like $400k. I suppose that overall it might end up being more or less, I still have a few tens of thousands in stock, but most of it ended up being the down payment on my house. The $300k was after buying into the stock (since I wasn't a super-early employee, many of my options cost like 10-25% of the then-market-value to buy), and after some taxes? But not all? AMT and prepayment of some taxes and stuff and my overall lack of financial discipline made it really hard for me to figure out how much tax I owed specifically on the stock. Another EDIT: Something else to point out was that at NetSuite, this was NOT principally from my initial grant at hire. NetSuite gave new grants of stock every year with ones yearly review, and those grants were pretty generous. Everything was on the same five year vest with a one-year cliff, so I got my entire year 1 and year 2 grants and then fractions of my remaining years. The year 1 grant was at the lowest rate to buy in, but that wasn't hugely important. I would guess that about 1/3rd of the stock that I eventually realized came from my year 1 grant. I've never been sure if that's common practice or not with other companies, and if someone could shed some light on that, it'd be awesome.

recondite 12y ago
Sounds like an equity refresh(er). Companies will grant refreshes to vested employees like you (i.e. past the 1-year cliff) to incent and award performance, and they are often given in lieu of a larger yearly cash bonus, which totally makes sense given the cash-strapped nature of most startups. However, what they won't tell you is if the company has gone through any recent rounds of financing, you as a common stock shareholder have been diluted, and getting a refresh often times only brings you back to your original ownership percentage, if that, so getting a refresh is really only bringing you back to square one in a lot of cases. In your case, it sounds like your additional grants were substantially more than refresh level (5-20%) which worked out pretty great. In my (limited) experience at 2 larger SV companies - 1 public, 1 private - they both "awarded" refreshes, and I would be surprised if most companies didn't. It's a win/win for the company - they can continue to raise cash through financing and use the cash to fund operations vs. paying out employees, and they can also "incent" their employees to work harder and faster with the promise of future riches.
Eridrus 12y ago
Would you mind disclosing at what stage of the process you got your initial grant, and how much that grant was diluted along the way to the IPO?
- aetherson 12y ago
  I don't mind disclosing but I don't really know. This was almost 9 years ago at this point, and my memory is hazy, plus I was pretty naïve about all of this crap back then. I definitely had at least one dilution event. Could that have been concurrent with the actual IPO? I want to say that I lost like 1/3rd of the ownership share of my stock, but honestly that could be total fabrication at this point, please don't bank on it.

recondite 12y ago

Sounds like an equity refresh(er). Companies will grant refreshes to vested employees like you (i.e. past the 1-year cliff) to incent and award performance, and they are often given in lieu of a larger yearly cash bonus, which totally makes sense given the cash-strapped nature of most startups. However, what they won't tell you is if the company has gone through any recent rounds of financing, you as a common stock shareholder have been diluted, and getting a refresh often times only brings you back to your original ownership percentage, if that, so getting a refresh is really only bringing you back to square one in a lot of cases. In your case, it sounds like your additional grants were substantially more than refresh level (5-20%) which worked out pretty great. In my (limited) experience at 2 larger SV companies - 1 public, 1 private - they both "awarded" refreshes, and I would be surprised if most companies didn't. It's a win/win for the company - they can continue to raise cash through financing and use the cash to fund operations vs. paying out employees, and they can also "incent" their employees to work harder and faster with the promise of future riches.

Eridrus 12y ago

Would you mind disclosing at what stage of the process you got your initial grant, and how much that grant was diluted along the way to the IPO?

aetherson 12y ago
I don't mind disclosing but I don't really know. This was almost 9 years ago at this point, and my memory is hazy, plus I was pretty naïve about all of this crap back then. I definitely had at least one dilution event. Could that have been concurrent with the actual IPO? I want to say that I lost like 1/3rd of the ownership share of my stock, but honestly that could be total fabrication at this point, please don't bank on it.