
Selling employee vested stock privately to current investors - jonthepirate
I keep getting contacted by former coworkers (engineers) who either recently left, or, who are miserable and want to leave somewhere where I used to work. The common thread is they cannot afford to exercise their vested options and pay the tax so they are letting options expire asking me for advice since I used to work there. Is this really common among other tech companies? Shouldn&#x27;t the <i>current</i> investors (institutional or otherwise) have some interest and ability to buy up employee vested stock?
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idunno246
There's no reason to. First, you're incentivizing people to leave if you offer
to buy their stock - its one form of golden handcuffs. Second, its generally
such small percentages that it's not worth the time. Talking with a cfo, the
only time you'll likely see this is if the company raises a new round and asks
the new investors to earmark some of the money for existing employees. But the
percentage will be limited, and won't be given to people who already left.

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chayesfss
Why would they buy them back when they can just wait the 90 days for it to
expire? I once sold my options in an authentication not fully understanding
the tax issues, wish I would have let mine expire...

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xg
There are some funds out there that will help employees exercise their stock
options (for a %). 137 Ventures is one of them. Generally, these types of
funds will only be interested in the stock of truly breakout companies.

