Blog — STOCK OPTION COUNSEL

We have suggested the following free resources to Stock Option Counsel clients to help them master this area and gain confidence in negotiating their stock options and other employee stock. We hope you find this list helpful and invite you to contact us to find out how Stock Option Counsel can help you evaluate and maximize your startup stock compensation. Contact>

1. David Weekly's An Introduction to Stock & Options for the Tech Entrepreneur or Startup Employee

2. Andy Payne's Startup Equity for Employees

3. John Greathouse's What The Heck Are My Startup Stock Options Worth?! Seven Questions You Should Ask Before Joining A Startup

4. Wealthfront's Startup Salary and Equity Compensation Calculator (This is very general but people find it helpful.)

5. Patrick McKenzie of Kalzumeus Software's Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued

6. Piaw Na's Negotiating Compensation, from An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups

7. mystockoptions.com's How does a private company decide on the size of a stock grant? (You may have to create a login)

Need more help? Stock Option Counsel provides legal services for employees, executives and independent contractors. Employees and executives rely on Stock Option Counsel's expert advice in their startup stock option matters to correct the imbalance of information and expertise in this area that can cause the uninformed to lose out on high value opportunities. We counsel clients during their compensation negotiations, their exercise choices and the sale of their shares. We also work with clients who are in disputes with employers or cofounders regarding their stock options, other equity compensation or intellectual property and help them resolve the issues in their favor.

Contact> us if you are interested in Stock Option Counsel. It works best to set up a 15 minute call so we can hear about your situation and describe how we would help as Stock Option Counsel. Alternatively, you can send us a message with your questions and we will respond and tell you how Stock Option Counsel could be valuable to you. Contact>

There are two ways to increase or decrease another party’s limit in a negotiation – sales and threats.[1] The picture above takes some of the mystery out of the salesman and the thug -- they're both just working as negotiators to change the perception of the current offer in comparison to the other party's BATNA – Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.

Selling improves the perception of the quality of the present offer so that the outside alternatives are unattractive by comparison. Threats decrease the attractiveness of outside offers or the possibility of making no deal and sticking with the status quo.

Threats

An ongoing employment lawsuit over no-hire agreements among Silicon Valley companies featuring Steve Jobs provides a strangely relevant example of the power of threats.

Edward Colligan, former CEO of Palm, has said in a statement that Jobs was concerned about Palm’s hiring of Apple employees and that Jobs “proposed an arrangement between Palm and Apple“ [2] to prohibit either party from recruiting the others' employees.

That would have been a simple offer of an agreement (however illegal that arrangement might have been) if Colligan had access to the undisturbed alternative of not participating and keeping the status quo.

But Colligan has said that Jobs’ next negotiation move was to make the alternative of nonparticipation very unappealing with the threat of patent lawsuits that would cost Palm and Apple a great deal of money. Jobs followed this threat with a reminder of just how unpleasant such litigation would be for Palm, considering the fact that Apple had vast resources to endlessly pursue the lawsuits: "I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies …."[2]

Even though most of us don’t use threats in a negotiation, it’s part of the logic of negotiation rhythms.

Selling

Selling is the more common (and generally legal) way to address the fact that the other party has choices outside the present negotiation. As we discussed in the prior posts, a party's price or terms limits are defined by his or her best alternative outside of making an agreement in the present negotiation. Selling moves the limit when it can make the present offer more appealing than what had been perceived as an outside alternative.

Many people resist “selling themselves” in a salary negotiation because they are embarrassed to discuss their “value.” The logic of BATNA and negotiations provides some relief from this embarrassment, for it reframes “selling” from bluffing and puffing to describing and distinguishing one’s past experience and intended role in the organization.

Since the employer’s limit is not defined by an individual’s value, but by the employee’s differentiation from the field of candidates, the task of negotiating becomes more fact-based and less fear-driven. This logic encourages progress from the attitude of “Oh, they see who I am and hate me,” toward the sales approach of “Oh, it seems they need more information about what I offer in terms of my past experience and my role going forward.”

As an employee’s offer of services becomes distinguishable from the employer’s alternatives, the employer’s perception of the BATNA will change.

Consider an employer who believes there’s an equal candidate available for $120,000 and is entertaining another’s proposal to perform the role for $140,000. Without “selling” the offer of one’s services, the employer has no information with which to make a distinction between the two alternatives. The process of selling oneself to the employer is not to prove one’s inner worthiness at $140,000, but to show and tell that the employer is choosing between two distinguishable candidates.

(For those still interested in threats, distinguishing one’s skills is a form of a threat when it comes to negotiating with a current employer. Every element of the description one’s current performance and ongoing role is a threat of what the employer would have to work without or try to replace.)

What an employer would have once considered a better alternative – such as another equal offer for $120,000 – loses its appeal in light of the truth (sales pitch) of the $140,000 offer. If they are no longer equal in the mind of the employer, he or she must consciously decide if the other candidate at the lower price is still a better alternative. While there is no guarantee that the employer will prefer to pay more, the process of selling pushes the employer to the choice based on the true distinctions in the qualities of the candidates.

[1] Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Gerald B. Wetlaufer, The Rhetorics of Negotiation (posted to SSRI).

[2] http://vrge.co/USNorq