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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

To his suggestions, I have another.

Offer internal Dutch auctions on a regular basis to provide an opportunity for investors/the company/etc to buy stock from employees at a reasonable price. This makes the value of the company, from the point of view of the employee, not "funny money" but something very tangible. With an opportunity to cash out long before it is public.

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I'd be very careful with that... there are all sorts of internal/external events that can influence the perceived value of the company and information about them is not evenly distributed. Creating an environment where individuals in some groups can profit from this disparity (or even misinformation) is asking for ugly office politics.

All possible solutions come with downsides. It is still an option to consider.

Interesting, "insider insider" trading then, where some insiders are more inside than others.

Don’t think an auction makes sense when there is essentially only one buyer. Better would be to just offer a pool of money to buy up shares at each fundraising round at whatever price is set.

The easiest solution is that startup employees should be able to sell their shares in the open market, as they please.

Then all the problems go away.

That requires that you have IPOed. And that comes with its own set of complications.

Though there are secondary markets arising for this sort of thing.

It requires the SEC stop prohibiting it.

Until you're forced to start publishing quarterlies, or until the employees all unwittingly sell to the same would-be hostile takeover buyer.

Why would anyone else be able to sell shares to hostile buyers except employees. Hell, that clearly screws over employees.

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