Startup Stock Options – Why a Good Deal Has Gone Bad

Stock options for all employees of startups served several purposes:

The mechanics of a stock option was a simple idea – you received an option (an offer) to buy a part of the company via common stock options (called ISOs or NSOs) at a low price (the “strike price”.) One other thing to note is that all employees – founders, early employees and later ones – all had the same vesting deal – four years – and no one made money on stock options until a “liquidity event” (a fancy word to mean when the company went public or got sold.) Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad

While founders in the 20th century had more stock than the rest of their employees, they had the same type of stock options.

Source: steveblank.com