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Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by skybrian on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @02:25PM (#40661256)
I believe in diversification and index funds for most people, but this seems overdone.

The issue here is that sometimes if you procrastinate about diversifying, it pays off very well. As a Google employee (who joined after IPO), it was by far my best investment and funded my retirement.

I guess that's accidental gambling. I did have other investments.

Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by lurking_swe on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @02:56PM (#40661629)
Yes that’s accidental gambling. Or what i like to call “at the right place at the right time”.

Ask a Yahoo employee how that same plan would have worked out for them.

That being said, good for you. :)

Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by mgfist on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @04:11PM (#40662513)
Mostly agreed, but as an employee you do have some semblance of material non-public information that gives you a structural edge in assessing the stock. (This probably works better at a 1k-5k company than a Google/FB, but I can't say because I haven't worked at the big faangs).

I've benefited financially from having a good sense of how well things are going and holding/selling accordingly (within the confines of the law and blackout periods, of course).

Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by panopticon on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @07:30PM (#40664312)
> non-public information that gives you a structural edge in assessing the stock

This can also cut the other direction too. I had a slightly negative sentiment about Google during my tenure there due to the organization I was in. When earnings call season rolled around it didn't matter since the ads revenue line always dominated everything else.

Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by nealchandra on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @05:44PM (#40663532)
The way you can test if it's accidental gambling is by answering the following:

If you had worked at a different company with pure cash comp equivalent to your RSUs, would you have invested the same $$ in Google stock? Or would you have invested it instead in an aggressive but diversified portfolio (e.g. 100% S&P 500 or even just a bucket of blue-chip tech stocks).

I am confident that for the vast majority of tech employees they would choose the latter if they were operating in a pure cash regime.

Re:Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity by skybrian on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:47PM (#40664032)
No, I definitely wouldn't have invested so much in Google. However, I'm not sure how much to attribute to it being a default choice, versus the differences between an inside versus an outside view.

It's easier to be comfortable investing long-term in something you know well. While there's a lot I'll never know about Google, I think I understand the company somewhat better than others. For example, I can discount a lot of news articles as being written by people who don't really understand the culture. If I hadn't worked there, I might worry more.

That's less and less true, though, as much has changed since I left. And for investment purposes, maybe that bias only seemed to be helpful, versus an outside view?