Yeah. Sorry, I wish I could give more firm advice.
I guess it would help to know the current share price and what the same share would be worth at IPO. Usually you can "guesstemate" at that by:
* knowing the current revenue and costs
* guessing how that will grow over the next 4 years
* decide what the market's prevailing P/E ratio will be in 2-4 years assuming for the sector and country you are in to get to share price
* work out how diluted you think you will get
* applying some risk discount to all this
It's not a bad exercise to do to be honest. But every one of those numbers have a big range of uncertainty around them. You may end up with a range of share prices from 10-1000USD per share. Then you have to decide how many to buy but it's like lottery tickets after that...
Company will IPO in the next 4 years, current salary above market rate, will leave the company right after the IPO to "spend more time with my family". I want to maximise my gain and willing to gamble a few $ off my pay.
So if the company doesn't IPO in four years, and instead slowly staggers into the ground over ten while always promising it'll IPO in a few years, how does that change the terms?
Also, how liquid are these shares? If you can sell at IPO, cool. If you have to hold them for a year watching to see if the share price holds or (somewhat likely) collapses, not so good.
I'd take the salary and buy stock in public companies with it.
The good thing about speculating on already-public companies is you have access to a lot of data you probably do not have access to at your current company, and of course, they are already public :)
Not that I'm advising you to speculate on the market... I just buy ETFs lol
Every company thinks they will have a successful exit in a few years. Vanishingly few do. Out of all the companies that YC has funded, how many have IPOd?
I have had friends tell me forecasts like this with complete confidence. Just curious- what industry? What info do you know that convinced you to believe this? Eager to hear whatever you're willing to share.
Look at the last 12 months. Multiple sub-sectors of public equities down >80%. Do you think people saw that coming? If they believed it enough to bet on it, the opportunity to profit was huge. That's to say nothing of private valuations.
And yet every startup with some traction and a proof of concept PMF seems confident an exit is on the horizon. Maybe for parts of the last decade this was true, but now...
