Comment by portman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by portman | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of the rule that "there are no rules". Here is the ordered list of Post-IPO ownership for "Officers & Executives", a category which includes founders as well as execs brought on between founding and IPO.

    Microsoft   71.2
    Ebay        60.9
    Oracle      47.9
    Netscape    45.4
    Apple       43.4
    Google      32.0
    Numerical   26.9
    Genentech   25.6
    Yahoo       24.4
    Logitech    23.1
    Sun         21.2
    Rambus      20.7
    Riverbed    17.9
    Atheros     15.7
    Actelion    12.0
    MIPS        10.9
    Cypress     7.7
    Vertex      6.1
    Virata      4.1
    Arm         3.7

So we founders, IF our company survives, and IF we remain with the company, and IF the company IPOs, are going to keep between 3% and 71% ownership.

One might be inclined to say that it's even worse for employees, they average $100,000 [page 13]...if the company survives and if ..etc. And they have no power to negotiate the terms under which their stake gets diluted. Google and Microsoft each minted thousands of millionaires among the rank and file, but those are the exceptions.

But presumably they're also getting paid market salaries.

I would guess that at least some of the early employees make it into the Officers and Executives club.

VP's are shown to average $1,000,000 on the same page. But that's only for companies which actually make it to IPO. And while $1,000,000 is a lot of money when it's yours, that's not FYM in Europe or the US.

I'd say it's Semi-FYM. You can't walk away for life, but you definitely don't have an issue with quitting to go lie on a beach for a year or two.

Most Google, Skype, etc employees made way more than that.

What's interesting to see is also that for most of these companies, the total number of shares issued at IPO was below 10%. Info on who sold what when would be interesting as well.

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