Ask HN: If you're a distributed company how do you give share options
Since every employee is a formally contractor/ltd that sends monthly invoices, as a startup how do you assign options to them? What is the wording and legal gotchas?
In the US, contractors are not employees. Providing stock options to contractors probably has tax and legal implications. If the business is a C-corp where equity growth is the mechanism by which investment creates returns, then you already have employees in the form of founders, maiking the distributed team employees rather than contractors and using standard employee stock option practices is a well trodden path.
Talk to an attorney.