Ways Employees Can Exercise Their Stock Options
Employees in startups in the US are, according to findings published in carta.com, losing $30B every year in unexercised stock options, because 50% do not exercise their stock options upon leaving a company.
My guest in episode 360 of the HRchat podcast is Oren Barzilai, Founder and CEO at EquityBee, a company on a mission to help startup employees obtain the capital they need to exercise their stock options.
Oren is a serial entrepreneur. Prior to EquityBee, he co-founded and served as the CEO at Start A Fire, a social marketing platform, that served more than 3,000 of the world’s biggest brands. Before that, he co-founded and served as the CTO at Tapingo, a mobile commerce application that was acquired by GrubHub for $150 million.
Listen and Get Oren’s Answers to Questions Including:
- Why do stock options remain major collateral when employers are trying to attract and retain top talent?
- Paint a picture of the impact on employees of unexercised stock options
- How does EquityBee try to help employees extract value from the compensation they were promised?
- Secondary platforms allow employees who already own shares to sell their shares to investors outright. Is EquityBee the same? If not, why not?
- Any tips for new employees looking to negotiate their stock options package when joining a company?
About EquityBee
EquityBee’s goal is to enable employees to exercise their stock options and benefit from the value they created while employed at pre-IPO technology companies. EquityBee’s Investor Community provides the capital startup builders need to become shareholders.
EquityBee was founded by Oren Barzilai, Oded Golan, and Mody Radashkovich, who have a combined 25 years of experience in technology and finance.
Inspired by their own personal experience in the startup world where they witnessed countless employees, colleagues, and friends lose out on a significant part of their compensation because they couldn’t afford to exercise the options they worked so hard to earn, EquityBee’s founders started the company so they could help employees extract maximum value from the compensation they were promised while simultaneously giving investors a new way to invest in something they couldn’t before. Learn more at equitybee.com