Comment by cmiles8
4 hours ago
“Paying” is a relative term here.
Anyone that works for startups knows that it’s not really “compensation” until it’s cash in your bank account. Until then it’s just a theoretical number on paper, which tends to end up being worth a lot less than originally advertised/hoped.
I’ve lost track of the number of times that someone’s startup got acquired for (insert what sounds like a big number) and everyone is like “wow the employees must all be rich” only to find out later that after preferred cap tables and other terms the employees got very little.
A lot could happen here, but history says “watch this space” on this stock-based comp. Some options on the secondary markets but that only works as long as OpenAI can convince more people to dump money on the burning pile of cash they have going at the moment.
this is a completely false and outdated take, you can easily sell openai shares
The private secondary markets are extremely liquid if you’re a household name
The user experience is nearly the same as cash if you have an ounce of interest in having cash
You need company approval to sell yeah? That could be a major issue.
the industry secret is "not really", no, you don't
way before private secondaries got big, there were boutique funds and lawyers that set up the contracts and structures to circumvent this friction
and most companies do not care about that covenant, they care about the optics around their cap table to attract other investors and also satisfy securities regulators