I am working at a tech startup and have some portion of vested options that belong to me. I recently have some financial difficulties and would like to know if I can trade my vested option in a secondary market or something to some angel investors who are also interested in my current company. The extra bit of cash might help me in the next few months and would like to know how I can establish that. Any advice?
We're talking about private companies, not public ones. Easy liquidity is not an important feature of closely-held private company stock.
Then I think the best you can do is to sell the right to own the stocks when you will be able to sell them according to your stock plan. In practice you cannot sell the stock now but you can have a contract with a person that you will sell them as soon as you can. Or something like that...
On how to find somebody willing to buy them, I am not sure. Common stocks are considered almost worthless by a lot of investors. There are also some information about preference in round of funding etc, that a sophisticated investor would like to know but it is not always public knowledge outside of the board.
Before Facebook IPO I know SecondMarket was the place. I am actually curious about the options here.
One common way of handling these situations is for the founders or the company or other employees to purchase the shares. A loan with the shares as collateral is another possibility.
Keep in mind that selling shares may be viewed as a lack of faith in the company [likewise if the founders are not interested in reacquiring your shares.
Good luck.