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Ask HN: Do competitive startups offer annual stock refreshers?
1 point by seattle_spring on Nov 1, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
When I worked at a large company, I'd get an annual refresher worth approximately 1/4 of my original hire grant for "meets expectation" performance evaluations; potentially much higher for ratings that exceeded average.

Is there any sort of expectation for refreshers in pre-IPO companies? I'm not talking Uber or Airbnb, but smaller companies that are earlier stage-- think mid-sized Series B or C.



Short answer - there is no expectation for this except as a true up to avoid dilution (expectation... not requirement). My mildly informed longer form answer is yes, practically speaking, a Company can issue incremental options at its management's discretion (with required grant approvals from the board); however, experience tells me that while this does occur, it occurs rarely, so it is not an expectation. Incremental grants I have been exposed to are used as true-ups to net out dilution, which I would characterize as an "expectation". Options are used for retention, to incent high performance, and to attract talent. A Company doesn't have unlimited options to hand out and has to allocate grants carefully.




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