Couldn't the book cost 7.5k and one has 6.5 and the other has 0.5? Along those lines, isn't anything in the range of costing 7->8 (non-inclusive) acceptable (e.g. 0.9k and 6.9k)?
I guess it would depend how you structure the purchases. If you allow for the purchasing of a common share at the 409 valuation, you wouldn't have a tax hit until you sell it. You would be taxed on the salary used to purchase the share, however.
Interesting thought. We're a private company, so the stock is still illiquid. That wouldn't prevent purchasing stock, but the question is where it would come from. Option pools are used for new employee grants so that could work, but when that runs out you need to typically create additional shares and dilute the other holders. Will put a little more thought into this.
Depends on the role/level, but ~10-15k annually between each tier. I have gone beyond the endpoints (within reason) by just linearly extrapolating, though that tends to be pretty uncommon.
Can only speak to my experience, but I am completely indifferent to their choice. Either of the 3 tend to be relatively substantial in equity, so everyone is invested in some regard. I also believe that in the long run, unvested options aren't the best retention strategy and that a challenging and rewarding work environment coupled with competitive compensation is the way to build an invested team.
In general, it seems to be appreciated. We initially set it up this way to help take some of the stress out of negotiation (as that favors certain people over others). A few learnings off the top of my mind:
1. Regardless of the structure, the offer needs to be competitive. This wouldn't really help with lowballing offers.
2. Across the ~30 offers I've given out, I don't think that either of the 3 variants is more common. I suppose that indicates that different candidates are indeed optimizing for different situations.
3. Our hiring has intentionally skewed more senior and I think the variants of offers has helped create more family friendly offers.
Regarding options, I tend to make sure to offer to spend a good bit of time laying out the details of how they work (strike price, preferred value, vesting, cliffs, early exercise, etc.). They are indeed confusing and I find that people typically either overvalue the value of the options today, or undervalue the potential upside.
Agree with you on this. We do that at my company Divvy. Each prospective hire is given 3 different options (varying levels of cash / equity). The "implied" value of all three at the current valuation is the same, but as you mention some people prefer more equity upside and some prefer more cash in hand.
Without knowing your exact situation, one thing to keep in mind is that the preferred value (last valuation / # of shares) of a share is generally a good bit higher than the tax liability (value of a common share from the 409a minus your strike). Still likely a big tax hit, but perhaps slightly better. IMO changes to tax law for illiquid assets is the best but most unlikely option here.
Agree. I wrote the engine in Node (so punted on the threading problem a bit) then just ported pieces of the engine to firebase functions to handle the actual computation. Made testing a bit easier as I could just simulate players client side. What did you build yours in?
Thank you. Still feels like and endless set of features to add: tournaments, hot keys, animations, etc.
It took about 2 weeks of nights/weekends to have something functional I could play with friends. The engine was the hardest part. Then another week to open to the public and then it’s been a few weeks of bug fixes before it started to feel pretty stable.
I wrote a video-integrated online poker game to try and mimic in person home games. It was easier to build than I expected using Twilio, Firebase, and React.
Hey all. Built this over the past couple of weeks as an alternative to more Zoom calls. It’s built with React and using Firebase for storage and compute and Twilio for video. Hope y’all enjoy.