Hey fellas grinding away at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Pinterest and others previously in similar companies. What do you do with your vested RSUs/options worth paper money? Is it worth the wait till these companies IPO or get acquired?How do you buy house or any property with this paper money? Folks considering joining or that recently joined, how do you evaluate offer of a $100k RSU of paper money compared to a liquid stock at say Amazon, Google or Facebook? Curious to learn, not trolling. TC: $200k
Can someone please explain what paper money is?
So comparable offers from Lyft and Google will look something like this(p.a.): Lyft- cash 190+ 20, paper 200k Google - cash 180+28, stock 125k. The gambles not bad. The cash component itself seems enough to live reasonably in the Bay area. Paper money has a better chance of longer term returns. Does that calculation break down somehow? Yes I understand that Lyft may not survive post IPO. But what if I substituted it with your pet 🦄 - Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest.
I only accept paper money if it is significantly more than I could get from liquid money. Example : FB may pay me $200k base + 20% bonus + $150k/yr RSUs. Total comp is $390k if I get the standard bonus not counting stock appreciation. With max bonus multiplier for myself and FB my bonus could be $180k, although that's rare. Most likely my TC is actually up to $450k if I do a good job. From a pre IPO company, the package may look like $220-250k cash with no bonus multipliers + $600-800k RSUs. What is that stock worth? Who knows. But unless it crashes I'll hopefully be ahead.
How do you negotiate for less paper money more liquid money? Looking at offer for a pre IPO firm
I just left Pinterest for FB and am still evaluating if the paper money was a good move. Honestly I’m going to say no. If you’re very early on then maybe, but there’s lots of academic research that shows that in pre-ipo land the rewards disproportionally favor investors/early hires/senior leaders and the bulk of the risk is borne by employees.