In the News: Startup Employees in the Dark on Equity

“Mary Russell, an attorney who founded Stock Option Counsel to help employees evaluate their equity compensation, says the first step is for employees to make sure any equity is theirs to keep. Some companies have repurchase rights in their equity agreements that give them a right to buy back shares and options from any employee who leaves; and some give founders or investors broad latitude to change the terms.

“If the company can take back employee shares it dramatically limits the value of those shares,” says Ms. Russell. “It’s the sort of thing an employee needs to know about when they go into a job.” She says it’s as simple as asking whether the company can take back vested shares.”

— Katie Benner, The Information

See Katie Benner's full article, Startup Employees in the Dark on Equity. The Information is a subscription publication for professionals who need the inside scoop on technology news and trends. 

Startup Negotiations: How Preferred Stock Makes Employee Stock Less Valuable

Mary Russell counsels individual employees and founders to negotiate, maximize and monetize their stock options and other startup stock. She is an attorney and the founder of Stock Option Counsel.

If you have a job offer from a startup with an option to purchase shares representing 1% of the company, you may want to consider the Preferred Stock "Liquidation Preference" to see if your 1% would really be 1% if the company is acquired. If the Liquidation Preference is high, you might want to negotiate for more shares to make up for the loss in value you can expect when the company is acquired.

Common Stock v. Preferred Stock

As a startup employee, you'll be getting Common Stock (as options, RSUs or restricted stock). When venture capitalists invest in startups, they receive Preferred Stock. Preferred Stock comes with the right to preferential treatment in merger payouts, voting rights, and dividends. If the company / founders have caved and given venture capitalists a lot of preferred rights - like a 3X Liquidation Preference or Participating Preferred Stock , those rights will dramatically reduce your payouts in an acquisition.

Liquidation Preference & How It Makes Employee Stock Less Valuable

One Preferred Stock right is a "Liquidation Preference." Without a Liquidation Preference, each stockholder – preferred or common – would receive a percentage of the acquisition price equal to the stockholder's percentage ownership in the company. If the company were acquired for $15 million, and an employee owned 1% of the company, the employee would be paid out $150,000.

With a Liquidation Preference, preferred stockholders are guaranteed to be paid a set dollar amount of the acquisition price, even if that guaranteed payout is greater than their percentage ownership in the company.

Here’s an example of the difference. An investor buys 5 million shares of Preferred Stock for $1 per share for a total of $5 million. After the financing, there are 20 million shares of common stock and 5 million shares of Preferred Stock outstanding. The company is then acquired for $15 million.                                                                                                                           

Without a Liquidation Preference, each stockholder (common or preferred) would receive $0.60 per share. That’s $15 million / 25 million shares. A hypothetical employee who held 1% of the company or 250000 shares) would receive $150,000 (that’s 1% of $15 million).

If the preferred stockholders had a 1X Liquidation Preference and Non-Participating Preferred Stock, they would receive 1X their investment ($5 million) before any Common Stock is paid in an acquisition. They would receive the first $5 million of the acquisition price, and the remaining $10 million would be divided among the 20 million shares of common stock outstanding ($10 million / 20 million shares of common stock). Each common stockholder would be paid $0.50 per share, and hypothetical employee who held 1% of the company would receive $125,000.

Ugly, Non-Standard Rights That Diminish Employee Stock Value

The standard Liquidation Preference is 1X. This makes sense, as the investors expect to receive their investment dollars back before employees and founders are rewarded for creating value. But some company founders give preferred stockholders multiple Liquidation Preferences or Participation Rights that cut more dramatically into employee stock payouts in an acquisition.

If preferred stockholders had a 3X Liquidation Preference, they would be paid 3X their original investment before common stock was paid out. In this example, preferred would be paid 3X their $5 million investment for a total of $15 million, and the common stockholders would receive $0. ($15 million acquisition price – $15 million Liquidation Preference = $0 paid to common stockholders)

Preferred stock may also have "Participation Rights," which would change our first example above to give preferred stockholders an even larger portion of the acquisition price.

Without Participation Rights, Preferred Stockholders must choose to either receive their Liquidation Preference or participate in the division of the full acquisition price among the all stockholders. In the first example above, the preferred stockholders held 20% of the company and had a $5 million Liquidation Preference. When the company was acquired for $15 million, the preferred stockholders had the choice to receive their $5 million liquidation preference or to participate in an equal distribution of the proceeds to all stockholders. The equal distribution would have given them $3 million (20% of $15 million acquisition price), so they chose to take their $5 million liquidation preference, and the remaining $10 million was divided among 20 million shares of common stock.

If the Preferred Stock also had Participation Rights, (which is called Participating Preferred Stock), they would receive their Liquidation Preference and participate in the distribution of the remaining proceeds.

In our example with a 1X Liquidation Preference but adding a Participation Right, the Participating Preferred Stock would receive their $5 million Liquidation Preference AND a portion of the remaining $10 million of the acquisition price equal to their % ownership in the company.

$5 million Liquidation Preference + ((5 million shares / 25 million shares outstanding) * $10 million) = $7 million

Common stockholders would receive (20 million shares common stock / 25 million shares outstanding) * $10 million = $8 million.

Our hypothetical employee who held 1% of the company would receive $100,000 (.01 * $10 million) or 0.67% of the acquisition price.

Employee Focus – Calculating Your Payout

If you are an employee of a startup, you can use Liquidation Preference as shorthand for the minimum price the company would have to be acquired for before any employees would be paid out. 

If the acquisition price is less than the Liquidation Preference, common stockholders will get $0 in the acquisition.

If you want to go further and understand what you would be paid out if the acquisition price is more than the Liquidation Preference, consider these three scenarios:

If the preferred stockholders have Participating Preferred Stock, Your Payout = (Acquisition Price – Liquidation Preference) * Your % of All Outstanding Stock

If the preferred stockholders have Non-Participating Preferred Stock, you will receive the lower of:

Your Payout = (Acquisition Price – Liquidation Preference) * Your % of Common Stock OR

Your Payout = Acquisition Price * Your % Ownership

Employee Focus – What to Ask the Company

These calculations are complicated, so if you are evaluating a job offer you might want to stay out of these details leave it up to the company to tell you how the Liquidation Preference would affect you in an acquisition. Use these questions to understand how the Liquidation Preference would reduce the value of your common stock in an acquisition. Simply ask the CFO these questions:

1. What is the total Liquidation Preference? Do the investors have Participation Rights?

2. If the company were purchased today at the most recent VC valuation, what would my shares be worth?

3. If the company were purchased today at 2X the most recent VC valuation, what would my shares be worth? 

3. If the company were purchased today at 10X the most recent VC valuation, what would my shares be worth?

This will give you a good feel for how heavy the VC Liquidation Preferences are and how they would weigh down the growth in value of the common stock.

Founder Focus – Negotiating Your Acquisition Payout

If you are a founder and are negotiating with an acquiror, consider renegotiating your investors’ Liquidation Preference payout. Everything is negotiable in an acquisition, including the division of the acquisition price among founders, investors and employees. Do not get pushed around by your investors here, as their rights in the documents do not have to determine their payout.

If your investors are pushing to receive the full Liquidation Preference and leaving you and/or your employees with a small cut of the payout, address this with your investment bankers. They may be able to help you play your acquiror against the investors so that you are not cut out of the wealth of the deal, as most acquirors want the founders and employees to receive enough of the acquisition price to inspire them to stay with the company after acquisition.

Mary Russell is an attorney and the founder of Stock Option Counsel. You are invited to contact Stock Option Counsel for help in negotiating and evaluating your job offers and post-acquisition employment agreements, making stock option exercise and tax decisions and identifying your rights and opportunities to sell startup stock. 

Thanks to investment banker Michael Barker for his comments on founder merger negotiations. Michael is a Managing Director at Shea & Company, LLC,  a technology-focused investment bank and leading strategic advisor to the software industry.

VIDEO Startup Stock Options: Negotiate the Right Startup Stock Option Offer

Stock Option Counsel for individual employees and founders in all matters relating to startup stock options or other employee stock. This video describes stock options in a simple, accessible way. Call us when you want to evaluate, maximize or monetize your stock options or other startup stock. (650) 326-3412. www.stockoptioncounsel.com. info@stockoptioncounsel.com.

VIDEO Startup Stock Options: Startup Valuation

Stock Option Counsel for individual employees and founders in all matters relating to startup stock options or other employee stock. This video describes startup valuation for employees in a thoughtful, accessible way. Call us when you want to evaluate, maximize or monetize your stock options or other startup stock. (650) 326-3412. www.stockoptioncounsel.com. info@stockoptioncounsel.com.

Negotiating Equity @ a Startup – Stock Option Counsel Tips

Negotiating an offer from a startup? Here's some tips. For more information on how Stock Option Counsel serves employees who are negotiating their offers, contact us or see our intro video here> . 

1. Know How Much Equity You Want

For employees early in their careers, the only negotiable terms for equity are the number of shares of stock and, possibly, the vesting schedule. The company will already have defined the form in which you will earn those shares, such as stock options, restricted stock units or restricted stock.

Your task in negotiating equity is to know how many shares would make the offer appealing to you or better than your other offers. If you don’t know what you want for equity, the company will be happy to tell you that you don’t want much.

Your desired number of shares should be the result of thoughtful consideration of the equity offer. There is no simple way to evaluate equity, but understanding the concepts and playing with the numbers should give you the power to decide how many shares you want.

One way to compare offers and evaluate equity is to find the current VC valuation of the preferred shares in the company. If a VC has recently paid $10 per share for the company’s stock, and you have been offered 10,000 shares, you can use $100,000 to compare to other offers. If another company has offered you 20,000 shares, and a VC has recently paid $5 for their shares, you could use those numbers to compare the offers.  For more info on finding VC valuations, see: Startup Valuation Basics or contact Stock Option Counsel. For more on early stage startups that do not have VC valuations, see this post. 

Remember that the purpose of this exercise is not to have a precise dollar value for the offer, but to answer these questions: How does this offer compare to other offers or my current position? What salary and number of shares at this company would make this a stable, sustainable relationship for me? In other words, will this keep me happy here for some time? If not, it is in nobody’s best interest to come to a deal on that package.

For more information on negotiating equity, see our video: Negotiate the Right Stock Option Offer or our blog with Boris Epstein of BINC Search: Negotiate the Right Job Offer.

2. Look for Tricky Legal Terms That Limit Your Shares' Value

There are some key legal terms that can diminish the value of your equity grant. Pay careful attention to these, as some are harsh enough that it makes sense to walk away from an equity offer.  

If you receive your specific equity grant documents before you are hired, such as the Equity Incentive Plan or Stock Option Plan, you can ask an attorney to read them.

If you don’t have the documents, you will have to wait until after you are hired to study the terms. But you can ask some general questions during the negotiation to flush out the tricky terms. For example, will the company have any repurchase rights or forfeiture rights for vested shares? Does the equity plan limit the kinds of exit events in which I can participate? What happens to my equity if I leave the company?

3.     Evaluate the Equity’s Potential

Evaluate the company to know how many shares would make the equity offer worth your time. You can start by asking the company some basic questions on their expectations for future growth and the exit timeline.

The higher your rank in the company and the stronger your emphasis on these matters, the more likely you are to speak to the CEO, CFO or someone else at the company who can answer these questions. If you want more resources to help you think like a startup investor, there are great online resources on valuation, dilution and exits for startups.

But don’t place too much weight on the company’s predictions of the equity’s potential value, especially if those values are based on an early-stage company’s Discounted Cash Flows (DCF). Even the experts know that the only thing early stage startups know about financial projections is that they are wrong.

Stock Option Counsel

Stock Option Counsel provides legal services for individual employees and founders in negotiating, evaluating and monetizing employee stock.

Employees rely on Stock Option Counsel in: (a) evaluation and negotiation of employee equity offers; (b) identifying unusual terms in equity documents; (c) legal matters for sales of shares to third parties; (d) negotiation of employment offers after acquisitions and (e) disputes regarding equity and payouts at exits.

Founders rely on Stock Option Counsel in: (a) protecting their personal interests at incorporation, financings and exits; (b) coaching for their VC negotiations by bringing them to mastery of financing and exit deal terms; (c) managing friction between co-founders; (d) negotiating employment offers after acquisitions and (e) disputes regarding equity and payouts at exits.

For more information on Stock Option Counsel, contact us or see our intro video here>

Founders: Kurt Vonnegut's Caution on Corporate Attorneys

Kurt Vonnegut, Author

If you are a founder with some suspicions about the motivations and allegiances of your company's law firm, you may appreciate the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut has a great bit in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater about the worst motivations of corporate lawyers. 

The book is about money, sort of. Here's the opening line:

“A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

The Rosewater family had a great fortune. It was held by The Rosewater Foundation, for the benefit of the family's heirs, and managed by a law firm called McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee. An associate of the firm, Norman Mushari, was Vonnegut's embodiment of the worst motivations of corporate lawyers.

“No one ever went out to lunch with Mushari. He took nourishment alone in cheap cafeterias, and plotted the violent overthrow of the Rosewater Foundation. He knew no Rosewaters. What engaged his emotions was the fact that the Rosewater fortune was the largest single money package represented by McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee. He recalled what his favorite professor, Leonard Leech, once told him about getting ahead in law. Leech said that, just as a good airplane pilot should always be looking for places to land, so should a lawyer be looking for situations where large amounts of money were about to change hands.

”In every big transaction,” said Leech, “there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on. If the man who is to receive the treasure is unused to wealth, has an inferiority complex and shapeless feelings of guilt, as most people do, the lawyer can often take as much as half the bundle, and still receive the recipient’s blubbering thanks.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Vonnegut's wisdom is a good reminder to founders that their company's attorneys may be representing the company's money rather than its founders.

Stock Option Counsel provides personal counsel to founders to protect their individual interests. At incorporation, we review the company counsel's documents and provide founder-friendly terms. At financings and mergers, we train founders to help them master the deal terms so they can identify and negotiate for the terms most favorable to them as individuals. For more information, see the  Stock Option Counsel website or call us at (650) 326-3412.

Startup Stock: Particles and Waves. Casinos and Creativity.

Photo: Bobby Mikul

Mary Russell counsels individual employees and founders to negotiate, maximize and monetize their stock options and other startup stock. She is an attorney and the founder of Stock Option Counsel.

What is a corporation? Finance pros and justice types present two very different answers to that question.

On the finance side, a corporation is a casino-style financial arrangement between those who own stock. It divides up the rights to a financial return on capital. It emphasizes balance sheets and stock prices and risk and return to support the view that each corporation is a table in a casino that investors approach to place their investment bets and seek a financial return.

On the human advocacy side, a corporation is a living body made up of creative individuals. The liveliness of the group – defined to include investors, managers, employees, and, perhaps, the community or the earth – is the purpose of the corporation. They make comparisons to slavery, define externalities and articulate their values to support their view that a corporation is a living body that could not be owned.

Like a ray of light, which is at once a wave and a group of particles, the corporation is both a casino game for investors and a living, creative body. Evidence will always appear on both sides of this truth.

In choosing a career path and negotiating compensation, we use both perspectives. We find a place that has some life to it, to which our creative contribution can add life. But we tune into the casino view as well and seek compensation for the risk we take in joining the enterprise. This requires the eye of an investor who would look at the risks of the bet and the size of the possible return from every angle with the help of professionals in law, finance, technology, etc.

It would be distasteful to take this view of our work every day, but it must be done at some time. And it is best done with Stock Option Counsel. This blog will introduce the Stock Option Counsel perspective on the risk / investment that employees take / make in accepting stock options or other equity as compensation. It should be helpful to those evaluating their compensation and also reveal the points in time in which Stock Option Counsel can add value in this process.

Mary Russell counsels individual employees and founders to negotiate, maximize and monetize their stock options and other startup stock. She is an attorney and the founder of Stock Option Counsel. You are welcome to contact her at info@stockoptioncounsel or at (650) 326-3412.