Somewhere between your first vesting cliff and the day your company finally files to go public, a strange thing happens to your equity: it becomes a topic you think about at 2 am.
I have watched engineers at warehouse automation firms, drone startups, and industrial robot makers sit on option grants for six or seven years, quietly assuming the whole thing sorts itself out on its own.
It usually does not sort itself out on its own. The employees who handle a listing well are the ones who understood how their shares work long before a ticker symbol existed. [Read more…] about Your Equity in a Pre-IPO Robotics and Automation Company: What to Expect Before and After a Public Listing