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ikiris parent
Startup equity is the equivalent to the old Foxworthy bit

"You can't write me a check?" I said, "No, I -- a check? Hell yeah, I can write you a check! I thought you needed money. Tell you what, I'm just gonna pay the whole thing off right now! I'm gonna be a congressman when I grow up."

mgraczyk
It's not really, because it's finite. You don't generally dilute the options pool when you hire new employees, you give them some slice of a scarce options pool
achierius
Sure, but there's an extent to which the the board and its constitutive shareholders already expect to be giving away options for new employees, and as such will have allocated a pool for such purpose -- both for the "standard" package, and for "hard negotiators". For traditional tech startups (i.e. ones not so flush with cash as OpenAI), giving these away is far easier than giving away more real-world, honest-to-god cashflow, because that directly drains your runway, while all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse.
mgraczyk
> all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse

But at the time the employee is negotiating this has already been decided. The company has some valuation and you are offering some known percentage of that scarce resource. You could argue that the valuation itself is the thing being manipulated (which is partially true), but that doesn't change the cost of the offer to the company in units of equity %

paulddraper
My bank account says otherwise, but it depends.
ikiris OP
So do all the lottery winners. It doesn't really change how a lottery works, or the likely financial result.
mgraczyk
What fraction of lottery participants win, vs startup employees? It's rare and there is luck, but the quantities matter. You are much more likely to make money from a startup and it's much more under your control as an employee
reillyse
That’s an interesting thought experiment actually.

If you think about the amount of money given up as a startup employee you will definitely get some winnings.

For example, say as a startup employee you are earning/being compensated 80,000 a year in equity. If you bought $80,000 of lottery ticket’s each year how much would you win. Depends on the lottery but most lottery’s have a rough payout of approximately 50-70%. Let’s say it’s 50%. So you would expect to receive back $40,000 per year.

Do half of all startups equity turn into cash, I think not. So probably more likely to make money from the lottery.

mgraczyk
You are confusing expected value with probability of "winning".

The purpose is to trade EV for a small probability of high payout. It's less extreme than the big ticket lotteries but more extreme than a scratcher. If that's not for you, don't do it

Also your last point is either obviously not true (if you're talking about big lottery winnings) or trivially true (if you're talking about $1000 scratcher prizes). More people made life changing money from a single company (Facebook) than all California lottery winners combined across all time

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paulddraper
Less than half of startups have exits…

But most startup people don’t work at most startups.

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paulddraper
Of course.

Also…the lottery and startups work very differently.

coleca
Yes, the lottery has rules and governance. It's a much safer bet. Startups can decide to devalue their employees' shares. I'd venture that the odds are at least stated on the back of the ticket with the lottery. Employees of privately held startups are often sold a dream of future riches that rarely happens. Even where there is an exit, often even founding employees get taken for a ride.

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