I hope so, one of the most annoying leaks in my personal finance workflow is that I have to use a specific site to bridge between USD and USDC - if I could just send USDC directly from my mercury personal account, that would make life much easier.
congrats on the launch dex! this is a problem that i've already seen come up a dozen times and many companies are building it internally in a variety of different ways. easier to buy vs. build for something like this imo, glad its being built!
On pro-rata basis most of these secondary liquidity events as apart of raises are not "retirement" level of liquidity - it's just "safety net" level of liquidity. So I think they would probably not be considered "sizable".
I'll give you nice-guy points for turning it down - that's a very principled position to take when that much money is sitting in front of you and all you have to do is say "yes"
I think your intuition on #2 is right - pro-rata across the board or even if the amounts are small enough, offering to do it as a "series B bonus" line item in payroll is not out of the question. 10% seems on the high side but sub 5% it's probably do-able.
I agree with a lot of what you've written - I understand if you want to stay anonymous but would love to talk to you about this more if you are open to it!
I had no intention of posting this to HN (someone I don't know posted it!) and also didn't expect more than the 10 people I shared it with to actually read it - no vote bait intended! I'm happy to take your feedback on a better title that is less baity and more apt.
I'd be asking the same question, it's a fair criticism. I wrote this expecting 10 people to read it and I wrote it as a part of a writer's feedback group. I'm just a random guy who has worked at a lot of startups, nothing special!
I could not agree more - I still have no idea why 90 days is the standard. It also exploits people who are ignorant about equity compensation more than people who are not - which I think is even worse.
I don't know if I agree - but I'm open to being wrong. I can't recall many scenarios where I thought someone was a strong fit at 3 months but a terrible fit at 12 months. I can probably think of a couple of scenarios for 3 months and 6 months, especially with slower time to value roles like leadership positions.
Right now 3 months is within my risk tolerance - and there is another side to the cliff that folks don't talk about too often, pre-cliff people will generally be less transparent with negative feedback for fear of being fired before the cliff hits. I'm ok with giving up a bit of equity and polluting the cap table if it increases transparency faster. Maybe the lower risk bet would be a 6 month cliff but I believe 12 months is too long to hold the equity hostage.
