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Comment by scosman | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be assuming a seed round valuation of $40 million (it's returning $0 unless the exit is > $40m). That's absurd.

Edit: the assumption of 0.01% is also absurd.

A simplified calculator should include reasonable defaults. This is like a mortgage calculator called tldrCanYouAffordAHouse.com that assumes 25% interest rates and doesn't disclose that.

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It assumes that the total amount of money raised over all rounds will be $41 million, rather than that the seed round valuation is $40 million. All the investors, whether they came in before or after the employee joined, will still get their money back before the employee starts to profit.

Why is the assumption of 0.01% absurd? From what I have seen, that's exactly what an early employee can expect. 10% of the available stock gets split between the early employees, most of which (9%) goes to the founders/c-suite. The other 90% is reserved for investors, of which the founder(s) may be one.

If you have 100 employees by the time you exit, and 1% of the stock was divided among them (exactly the situation where I am), each would get.. 0.01%. That is 0.0001 of the issued shares..... as options.

This is no longer uncommon.

That's not correct. The founders already have stock before any round. They typically don't get any of the ESOP. In early rounds the ESOP is essentially carved out of the founders stock, it doesn't make sense to give some of it to them (just negotiate a smaller ESOP). Also, founders are not considered investors in the sense you mention (different stock classes).

Secondly "by the time you exit" isn't relevant. Your stock is setup by when you join. If you join a company with 100 people, sure you get less. But 0.01% for Seed/A isn't even close. If that's what you get offered, don't take it.

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