We allow early-exercise too but I (possibly, incorrectly) assumed that this was the standard for newly incorporated startups - at least within the last 2-3 years it has become significantly more common.
"secondary sales restricted only by a short right-of-first-refusal period"
I really like this as well, I've always found it confusing when private companies are anti-secondary for former employees especially. I'll look into adding something like this to our stock plan, ROFR protects against any hostile take over weirdness and I'm confident we could add something like this to make it relatively easy to sell on secondary under a certain % threshold.
Early exercise is purchasing shares before your options vest, making you a shareholder sooner and solving a bunch of tax issues. The company retains the right (basically the obligation) to repurchase any unvested shares should you leave the company before fully vesting.
Not a restriction of the 83b election but a restriction of when you can exercise. Without early exercise you are stuck exercising as you vest so there’s more likely to be a taxable spread between your option strike price and the value of the stock. With early exercise you are exercising and making the 83b election when there’s no taxable spread.
What would this even look like? An 83b election is something I file with the IRS. Are you suggesting a company might have me sign a contract committing me to not file an 83b election?
How would they ever find out if I did file, and why would they care?
My understanding is that 83b applies to stock, not options, so you have to first exercise the options and hold unvested stock. That requires early exercise.
It's been a possibility in my options contracts. However, the company must agree to it, cash your exercise check, and send the necessary paperwork to the IRS. If they choose not to cooperate, you're out of luck.
I think there's a confusion between the related events. Filing the 83(b) form with the IRS is between you and the IRS. Company isn't involved so not something they can restrict.
However, filing that 83(b) only makes any sense if you are allowed to early exercise and that is indeed entirely up to the company. So if they don't let you early exercise you also won't be filing the 83(b).
Pro tip: Never join a startup that does not let you early exercise!!
Yes i assumed parent was referring to early exercise but maybe i misread. Imo early exercise doesn’t make a ton of sense when the company no longer qualifies for qsbs especially if long exercise window is offered so probably why it’s not offered - to avoid a ton of drama later on
> Imo early exercise doesn’t make a ton of sense when the company no longer qualifies for qsbs
I strongly disagree, early exercise is always optimal if the cost makes sense to you.
The primary reason it is so valuable is so that you don't lose everything if you have to change jobs for whatever reason before a liquidity event. If you join a startup and don't early exercise, now you are going to have to work there for however long it takes for liquidity, which could be many many years. Maybe your life changes and you have to change jobs, but you're trapped, or lose everything you worked for.
Always early exercise! If the startup doesn't allow it, find a different startup.
Edit: I should add that by not early exercising you can still lose a lot even if there is a liquidity event while you're still there! I lost a staggering amount of money on my first startup due to not early exercising even though it went through an IPO while I was there. But later I left (lured to another startup) so I had to excercise (same day sell) all the option in the typical 90 day window after quitting. Had I early exercised years before when I joined, I could've held those shares for 15x returns.
See my point about long exercise window - 5-10y is not uncommon now. I’d rather have that even though it converts to PSOs than gamble ~50k + amt on early exercise. Unless you’re super early ofc which changes the math
I'd be curious on survey data on that if something is available.
Personally I've never encountered a startup that had anything other than the standard 90 day after you quit exercise window. I know these long exercise windows exist but as far as I knew they are pretty rare.
> gamble ~50k
That's a huge number though, I'd never gamble that much either.
I'm talking about very early in the startup. If the strike price is above a few pennies, it's too late (although of course depends on the number of options and your personal budget).
Anecdotally, i've received more offers in the last ~5 years with extended window. I think it's just natural evolution due to increased competition for talent with high-paying public companies. Here's an incomplete list btw[0]. There are usually some strings attached - e.g additional cliff to qualify (like 2-3 years with the company) and you need to sign a separation agreement when leaving, etc
> That's a huge number though, I'd never gamble that much either.
I've been offered early exercise of 25k options with a $2 strike price. Series B startup. So yeah...
No idea how complete that is, but it lists roughly ~160 companies. Which is nice, but according to [1] there are about 71K startups in the US. (Of course both of these counts might be wrong but let's go with these numbers.)
So about 0.2% of startups have extended exercise windows. Not a lot ;-(
Sorry, separate concepts executed at separate times.
Early exercise (yep, 83b in the US) when options are issued then allowing employees to sell shares down the road, outside of fundraising events (Forge, EquityZen, sales to angel SPVs, etc.).
This is not uncommon across the border in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Some years have seen dozens of connectivity blackouts with the stated goals of maintaining peace and order or disrupting terrorism.
> just in Kashmir where India cuts off all internet as a means of control over the population
Just for perspective, the government would likely claim that there have been multiple violent/deadly attacks over years/decades, often against the Indian army.
I am not going to comment on anything as to who is right or wrong beyond this because I barely know enough about the whole situation. All I know is that it is too complex for a single comment.
I take it that your point is the opposite, but it's still a good one: the Blitz would have gone VERY differently had there been AA guns on every rooftop. It'd get pretty expensive for bombers to plunge into the Channel and pilots thrown into a POW camp.
But the result wouldn't have been AA guns on every rooftop. The UK's capacity to produce AA guns wouldn't have increased. Their economy was already focused entirely on the war. The result would have just been a lack of planning on how to actually make effective use of the resources available.
And there would not have been any advancements on the radars used in "Chain Home", because "Your place got bombed because you didn't defend it well enough, nothing we can do"
This is a forever problem. It’s difficult to judge the competency or skill of a professional without also being a professional in the same space. Word of mouth is the usual solution.
Another approach is to pick a few lawyers (read things they’ve written, online reviews, etc.) then do intro calls and pick the one who clicks best. Do a couple of low stakes projects with them to feel out their competency.
I’ll note that it can be worthwhile to match the professional to the task. No reason to pay top dollar to a specialist if all you need is some common boilerplate that any lawyer can do. You’ll also need to line up separate commercial and criminal lawyers.
Well... when we were like cave men and calories were hard to get, hunger pangs make more sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
But now, through farming technologies, food has never been more abundant. Yes we've saved people from dying of famine, but then the corn producers grew so much more corn that were beyond America's daily dietary need, they then could use much of it for HFCS, say. Or you know, Taco Bell's fourthmeal.
With these drugs, is there any mechanism at work beyond "patients have a lower appetite and eat less food"?
I've only read a few papers and articles but what I've seen is that all of the hormone triggering leads to 1) decreased appetite 2) slowed gastric emptying which also decreases appetite.
Patients lose weight due to eating less but usually regain the weight when stopping the drug since they then go back to their normal level of eating.
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Are these drugs fixing/replacing a system failure where people don't feel satiated normally?
Can the same effect be replicated by eating a higher fiber and higher fat diet with more whole foods to feel full longer and slow gastric emptying?
GLP-1 affects a lot of systems beyond just appetite and gastric emptying. For instance it acts in the pancreas to promote insulin secretion. GLP-1 receptors are also found in a lot of other tissues, including heart, tongue, adipose, muscles, bones, kidneys, liver and lungs. The effects of GLP-1 in these tissues are an area of intense research.
> With these drugs, is there any mechanism at work beyond "patients have a lower appetite and eat less food"?
Those are definitely the key routes, but I suspect from my experience (and so the do the drug companies!) that there's some kind of mediation of reward system going on there too. Simply put: I no longer get a massive dopamine hit from sugary food. A candy bar still tastes great, but I don't immediately want to eat another one like I used to, even if I'm genuinely hungry. My addictive response to food is gone.
My favourite foods still taste great, I just no longer have to expend all of my energy in not having three portions.
> Can the same effect be replicated by eating a higher fiber and higher fat diet with more whole foods to feel full longer and slow gastric emptying?
No. Like many people who've been on a perpetual diet, I have tried -- at length -- virtually every style of eating known to man. The food noise always comes back. Even before I started, I was eating very healthily as a base-line, mostly vegetables, mostly vegan, mostly whole foods, tracking my fiber to make sure it was high. But I've also tried and sustained for many months keto, paleo, "slow carb", all sorts.
- Another study - there was a 16% weight loss for those that received semaglutide/diet/exercise/counseling versus a loss of 5% for placebo those that received diet/exercise/counseling without semaglutide.
But they didn't control for calories, so it may just be proving that dietary adherence with the medication is better than without.
> Are these drugs fixing/replacing a system failure where people don't feel satiated normally?
> Can the same effect be replicated by eating a higher fiber and higher fat diet with more whole foods to feel full longer and slow gastric emptying?
I think it simply takes a long time for your body to adjust back to where it should be after a period of extended binging and these drugs make it happen much faster. The only time I consistently lost weight in my life was when I lived in a food desert and had no car and not much money, so I was forced to only buy the cheapest vegetables and meats (usually chicken) and make what I could out of that and make it last for the week. Even then it took more than 6 months before I felt normal eating that way.
Of course, it's extremely easy to fall off the wagon when your body works this way too. Even a day can wipe out weeks of gains and you can always 'relapse' even after months of doing the right thing, and end up stagnating or completely reversing any progress you've made. In a way it seems that food is the most addictive drug of all. You can easily quit alcohol, cigarettes, hard drugs with a couple weeks of willpower (and I have multiple times). You can't ever stop eating food if you want to be around to experience life.
