The Beginners Guide to Understanding Your Startup Options
The visual “get smart fast” guide to understanding your options and key questions you should be asking
DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor, and the contents of this article should not be taken as “the law”. Always consult with an actual financial advisor or an attorney when working with your options. I just know this stuff is really complicated, and even having an understanding of the basics is tremendously valuable.
We’ve been hiring a lot lately for our companies, Learn In and BookClub. One of our founding principles is to bring people on who are aligned to our mission, and one way to help do this is by offering stock options as part of every compensation package.
Many of these amazing people have never worked in a startup before, and haven’t had to deal with stock options. As such, they have a lot of questions trying to understand them, what exactly they’re being granted, and how exactly they work.
Options are complicated. After 7 years of dealing with them, I still feel like I learn something new in every discussion or question a new team member brings up. As a new employee in a startup, you may or may not have dealt with stock options before, and either way, they can be infuriatingly…
