The big problem I have with startup equity compensation these days is the time it takes to get to get to liquidity.

Going from founding to an IPO takes what, 8-10 years? Even assuming things go that well if your equity doesn’t have terms like early excercise or a long time to decide if you want to exercise it’s not a good deal. It’s easy to get locked into working with below market compensation in scenarios like that.

Also very few companies allow for things like secondary markets.

It’s going to be interesting to see how or rather if this gets addressed in the coming years.