
Ask HN: Do competitive startups offer annual stock refreshers? - seattle_spring
When I worked at a large company, I&#x27;d get an annual refresher worth approximately 1&#x2F;4 of my original hire grant for &quot;meets expectation&quot; performance evaluations; potentially much higher for ratings that exceeded average.<p>Is there any sort of expectation for refreshers in pre-IPO companies? I&#x27;m not talking Uber or Airbnb, but smaller companies that are earlier stage-- think mid-sized Series B or C.
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powerfulcurve
Short answer - there is no expectation for this except as a true up to avoid
dilution (expectation... not requirement). My mildly informed longer form
answer is yes, practically speaking, a Company can issue incremental options
at its management's discretion (with required grant approvals from the board);
however, experience tells me that while this does occur, it occurs rarely, so
it is not an expectation. Incremental grants I have been exposed to are used
as true-ups to net out dilution, which I would characterize as an
"expectation". Options are used for retention, to incent high performance, and
to attract talent. A Company doesn't have unlimited options to hand out and
has to allocate grants carefully.

