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Comment by mandeepj | Hacker News Reader

> When deciding to join my recent company, equity was the largest factor in my move.

Great, it worked out for you. A friend of mine, recently got an offer from a pre-IPO company. He asked for equity, but they are refusing to share any numbers - saying - their lawyers asked them to not do that. Is it normal?

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I can't speak to whether it's normal but it's a red flag for me. One of the companies I've worked for was pre-IPO and went IPO while I was there and when they hired me two years before that IPO they laid out the vesting schedule (1 year cliff, then monthly vesting of the remaining 3/4s of options) along with the strike price of the options along with how that strike price/valuation was calculated. Other places have had varying levels of professionalism like that but that was the only place that ended up IPOing and I believe there is a correlation between the professionalism of laying out clear compensation and the actual performance of the rest of the company.

Frustratingly so. Getting an offer of a number of shares, without any context on the total number outstanding or recent valuations, doesn't provide you with the ability to calculate future upsides. Though even if you get those numbers, it is much rarer for things like preferred shares and any liquidity multiple they might have, which can screw over the common holders even is successful exits.

As the owner of a company, I can tell you that any company that will not give you all the financial information necessary to value your shares and know what it's worth is scamming you.

They have to tell you at least the 409a or a similar valuation -- it's the strike on the grant.

No. Under no circumstances should you accept an offer when a company refuses to give you any sort of context for what your grant might be worth.

My friend told me - the recruiter even went on to say - if he shares info about equity grants - then it'd be called "Insider Trading" :-).

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