Ask HN: Is it legal to earn stock options for taking actions on a website? - sharemywin
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davismwfl
Yes, but there are some rules around it and generally to make it legal and
proper you need to get some legal advice. Depending on the structure of the
other business and how you are setup, it will be different.

For example, last I was advised (a while back), if you are an individual you
can only accept payment via stock options (and no other compensation) if you
can qualify as an accredited investor (SEC rule). This might have changed with
some of that rule changes in the past few years, so you should check it.

If you are a corporation (LLC/C/S Corp) the rules are different and at least
from what I remember more flexible.

My 2 cents having done this in the past, 98% of the time you take stock and
get no pay off in the end. I stopped doing these deals even with funded/backed
startups because I never made my money back. FWIW I did find other deal
structures which let me get paid more consistently and that wasn't tied to
their stock/options. This would still let them get my services now when they
needed them, in turn for a future payoff for me. Usually you want to tie it to
revenue numbers (via a rev share), or the next round etc. And I charged a
premium for this, and didn't discount since I was taking the larger risk.

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sharemywin
I'm thinking referring other to the site, voting on content, creating an
account, etc.

Possibly even more complex activities like contributing code etc.

