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Re:What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn by jonathankoren on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @02:13PM (#13429344)
You are not going to get a year's salary in ISOs. You're not. At typical ISO strike prices (i.e. prices on the range ones of dollars), that would be an a lot of options. A company is simply not going to do that. It's much more likely you'll get something like half your salary or even less in ISOs (of course vesting over 4 years). This doesn't matter if the company IPOs with a 10x multiple of the strike price, but then again, the company has to have a major liquidity event.

The uncertainty around the current valuation (which everyone has due to the infrequency of material events), the uncertainty around the likelihood of a major liquidity event, its size, and its type make ISOs incredibly hard to accurately price. If anyone says they can do it accurately, they're lying.

Re:What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn by econner on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @03:02PM (#13429776)
What makes you so sure? Say the company is valued at $300M when you join. $100,000 worth of ISOs is 0.03% which is not unreasonable if you're an engineer from say employee 5 to employee 50 or so. Now, the company becomes a unicorn valued at $3B which is 10x.
Re:What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn by jonathankoren on Thursday January 19, 2017 @01:03AM (#13433447)
I'm not saying that the basis points are unreasonable. I'm saying that my salary is more than $100,000.