Hacker News Reader

Comment by nextstep | Hacker News Reader

This article from 10 days ago claimed that most employees have a $15 strike price: https://www.theinformation.com/soon-free-to-sell-few-snap-em... (paywall).

Can anyone confirm that most late Snap employees unlikely to exercise options anytime soon?

View on HN

Most late employees got generous RSU's instead of options.

Only to employees hired post IPO though, correct?

Why would it be restricted to post-IPO employees? It's pretty common to get RSU grants at a startup pre- or post-IPO. Typically you can negotiate the mix.

Source: have received and negotiated on offers within the last three years from "name-brand" pre-IPO startups.

No, they've been granting private RSUs for at least a year before.

I don't know where they can get their figures. $15 sounds a bit high for a median. The average tho is in the S-1: $2.33. Maybe the average is heavily skewed downwards by some very cheap penny options?

I have to believe it’s heavily skewed with older huge grants to higher ups

Large portions of these grants are likely to be in the form of RSUs rather than options. I find the whole "underwater" narrative less compelling for this reason (RSUs are never under water).

But presumably the employee had to pay a load of taxes on the RSU, no? I don't think SNAP is down so much yet, but you could end up with a very large loss, which is difficult to write off if you don't have other capital gains. Yes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com