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Comment by nikolayasdf123 | Hacker News Reader

wonder what they employees think. will they ever IPO and cashout?

Since this year the employees are vesting RSUs (not options, and also no expiry date) quorterly now, they sell a portion of them (automatically) and pay taxes to the government at each vesting event, as the expiry date no longer exists. For liquidity there are tenders where employees sell their stock privately, so the employees no longer need IPO to cash out.

Just to clarify - for many years employees were getting the RSUs not options, just with the expiratation date attached - which is gone since this year.

So what happened to employees who had RSUs with expirations that have passed? Do they lose the value? I know my startup stock had 10yr expirations.

It didn’t happen as they were careful to make a tender before expiration hit anyone.

I've heard they're regularly doing buybacks for employees.

If their options haven't converted to stock yet, it's not looking good. This is the sort of shenanigans that demand a strike. And ideally regulation.

Options can a significant portion of sign on bonus but they typically vest over several years so I guess they are hoping for an IPO eventually. IMHO Databricks will be overtaken by "events" including AI disillusionment, broader open source tools and broader education across the workforce. So the eventual IPO will not happen.

Depends. Some options only vest in the case of an "exit event", i.e. an acquisition or an IPO. At this point I would assume such options are borderline worthless.

Yeah I think this is how it usually works, and yeah at $100bn valuation they are now 100% worthless, because investors get paid first, and there's no way they'll get sold or IPO for more than $100bn.

> Yeah I think this is how it usually works, and yeah at $100bn valuation they are now 100% worthless, because investors get paid first, and there's no way they'll get sold or IPO for more than $100bn.

Not quite right? Because the raise-implied valuation doesnt account for preferences. The IPO could be for 50bn and the latest investors could do well given the preference stack of first money outs in later rounds.

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