Great post, I particularly appreciated the “getting the salary without knowing the currency” quote: it was an analogy I’d been looking now for a while, I’ll be reusing it ;-)

The other point worth noting is that CEO/Founders’ and investors’ interests are largely at odds with employees’ — this is a point rarely understood (“we all have shares, right?”) by most folk (and that I had to learn myself the hard way).

The differences are in both (a) the protections (as you correctly pointed out) and (b) in the massive scale difference; allow me to explain: a founder has typically several %’s points of equity and is usually allowed to sell some of their share at “liquidity points” (aka, investors’ rounds) — this means that not only they benefit from high (albeit unrealistic) valuations, but they can also “cash in” several $’Ms even while the company is still largely unprofitable and years away (if ever) to become public.

Investors, at the same time, can equally either cash out (found “a greater fool”) or just notch up the (paper) gain in their books and enjoy the preferences’ protections.

Employees can do neither and, in fact, will suffer an even greater tax liability if they do choose to exercise their options (ending up being, perversely, “trapped” with a company they can’t leave unless they accept to lose all their vested options if they can’t afford it).

The current state of affairs is in my opinion untenable and something will have to give.