Having done this first hand, can you comment on whether or not they met the price? A VC related a story where an employee of a different company had offered to sell him his exercised common shares, and the company reminded the employee that they had first right of refusal, so the employee offered them to the company at the same price he was going to sell them to the VC, which the company took.

The employee got what they wanted (cash for their stock).

Sure. The company rejected the sale between me and a third party. They instead arranged for an alternate sale at the same price with one of their "preferred buyers." They were obligated to meet the price I had arranged privately with my broker and my buyer.

What infuriated me was that I had to do all the leg work and paper work and it was only when the money for the sale went into an escrow that the company rejected the offer. So they wasted a lot of people's time unfortunately - mine, the broker and the buyers time. The companies "preferred buyer" turned out to be some Hollywood big wig. And my guess is that they never had any intention of letting my proposed sale go through.

One curious thing I learned is that although this practice of selling options on the secondary markets by "worker bees" was strongly "discouraged" because it was seen as a sign of not believing in the company, it turns out the execs were all selling their options left and right and had been doing so for years.

That is what the right of first refusal is, you have to match the price they are selling for.

ROFR isn't that bad. What is bad is some contracts have a call option on your stock at FMV price, even when you exercise.