Have you not worked in California? This is sidestepped by offering "unlimited PTO" at every company I've worked at in the last 10 years. I can only think of one friend here who actually got paid out for unused PTO.
I've gotten paid out twice for my PTO and one of them actually happened to be a "hip start-up" who didn't believe in "unlimited PTO".
$currentEmployer is announcing with rolling it out next year, they themselves are a rather boring healthcare systems provider.
Maybe the difference lies in how the two of us define ‘hip start-up’, though.