Left a company a few years back. Exercised a bunch of options right after leaving. 409a doesn't show, so I have no way of knowing what they're worth. Isn't the company obligated to share this information with shareholders? #stock #iso #carta
Firstly, the 409a valuation of your startup is useless for you as it is used only to set the strike price when you are awarded with equity as an employee. When you sell your shares or options (in cases the company allows employees to run a cashless exercise) during a liquidity event (new round or fund raising) you are paid the preferred price or a value very close to it, which is usually a magnitude higher than the last FMV defines by the 409a report. Secondly, it is private information and cannot be shared publicly by any of the share holders as it can influence the market value of the company, which is not legal as per SEC regulations, whereas ASC820 can be publicly shares as it evaluates the company fair value, not its shares. You should only be worried if you exercise/strike price drops. It means your company ran a repricing because the 409a was below it's old report value and people would pay more to exercise than it is worth it. Be aware that companies also run stock splits which may change the exercise price of your options too, but not the total notional value as it does not change the dilution. I hope it helped.
I guess my main question is: does the company for which I own stock in have absolutely no obligation to tell me anything about the stock I own?
No, this is private information if you are an ex-employee and will very likely be useless for you. You can contact company legal affair representative and ask if they are nice and have no problem disclosing it to ex employees. If you want to know what is its net worth, Carta shows your ownership percentage in your portfolio. Get the last company valuation (ASC820 as my colleague said above) and multiply by your ownership%. This will give you the notional value. Usually, when a company raises a new round, ex employees are allowed to sell 100% of their shares. At that moment you will know what is the preferred price (which investors will pay for your stock).
You can ask for a current value. You can also ask to see if they will let you see the cap table.
If not, I'll add that to my list of dozens of reasons to never join another startup, unless I'm a founder