> It's very common for young people to not understand financial matters like options grants
Do you have any recommendations for learning more about that?
I recently started working full-time at a tech company and I feel like I also have too little understanding of those things.
I didn't come to it easily myself, and I would have thought my degree would have taught me something, but somehow they gloss over a lot of things in business school.
These days there's a lot more online that you can google. Here's the rough areas of coverage I'd go for:
- Corporate fundamentals. What is limited liability? How do I make a co in my country? What are the different types of co available? (GmbH vs AG, LLP vs Ltd, C-Corp vs S-Corp, Charities?)
- What are the financial and taxation setups? Basically, how are entities related to each other? Can I borrow money from my co? How are dividends treated. This is a thing you want an accountant to tell you, because they know the praxis, not just the headline rules of your jurisdiction.
- Finance. What does capital structure mean? What's the difference between equity and debt? What's the difference between your mortgage and your credit card? What are options and warrants? (I spent years trading vol, still there are differences between listed options and employee ones, esp wrt tax). What do junior and senior mean? What are preferred shares, and what are convertible bonds? Since we're talking here, HN people have written a load of articles about SAFE notes and similar. They are quite good about also explaining what your interest is in these situations, because it's often not obvious to a newbie.
Interesting article from a couple of days ago was about Toptal. Those kinds of articles should be read.
I started getting a “wrong pay” by a shark in Luxembourg, I was unhappy. But then, if you asked compensation for now knowing how to negociate this contract, how do you know how to negociate a contract for nuclear weapons or for the biggest commitment of your company?
You don’t. You never do. The only correct way is to repeat. And thus, if you sell billion dollar contracts, go lower and do it more often, never go for the biggest ever. Or at least, progress step by step, so you know most of the major tricks. But if a major contract is your biggest ever by a multiple, then you’ll always br cheated on tricks you don’t know yet. And on smaller contracts you’ll cheat the weaker person. Don’t abuse it, but it’s part of the contract theory.
Venture Deals (by Brad Feld) provides a great overview of startup finance matters. It is intended for founders and covers things other than employee equity. It’s an extremely useful read because it provides a holistic overview of the overall fundraising process and enables one to think about equity in a systematic way.
The new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor is slightly newer, a little more readable, and talks a lot about dilution, but otherwise covers almost the same ground.
Both books are great in understanding the space and motivations of various players.
That’s another great one! I would suggest reading the Venture Deals (which appeared quite practical to me) first and following it up with the Secrets (that’s great for understanding incentive structures and motivations of everyone involved).
Do you have any recommendations for learning more about that? I recently started working full-time at a tech company and I feel like I also have too little understanding of those things.