Equity comp

RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) are company stock that will be paid according to a vesting schedule. The taxation of RSUs isn’t straightforward. And what’s even more difficult is [...]

Incentive Stock Options are complicated. If you’re an early employee of Affirm, Snowflake, or soon-to-IPO companies like Coinbase, you likely are facing a windfall. Before you go down the [...]

Congratulations on your company’s IPO! Now comes the hard part as you wait for the lockup period to end. Traditionally, companies enforced a 180-day lockup period. Recent IPOs from Affirm, [...]

Transitions, even positive ones like a financial windfall from an IPO, can be overwhelming. You may be uncertain about what to do with your upcoming windfall from your company’s IPO. [...]

Stock options and taxes are top of mind when I speak to people whose companies are going public. In my previous post, we reviewed the basics of stock options. In this post, we’ll review [...]

Your stock options are complicated. You may have several questions: When should I exercise? What should I do with the shares once we go public? What is a lock-up period? How does the tax part [...]

Income taxes are one of your largest expenses. But it’s easy to ignore income taxes. They’re automatically withheld from your paychecks. Then you file your tax return in the spring, and you [...]

Edited 6/2/2020 and 6/4/2020: if you’re angry/disturbed/depressed by racial injustices like George Floyd’s murder, there are many ways you can help. Here’s a short list of [...]

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 epidemic, we experienced the sharpest and fastest bear market in history. The term “bear market” refers to market drops of more than -20%. The [...]

Congratulations: your RSUs are about to fully vest! RSUs issued by a private company are sometimes called “double-trigger RSUs.” You must meet two criteria for your RSUs to fully vest: (1) you [...]