Guide to Your Equity
<i>Your stock options expire 10 years after they were issued or 30 days after you stop working with Clef</i><p>This market standard provision in startup employee equity agreements is probably the single biggest obstacle to realizing a gain from employee equity.<p>What it means is that when you leave your job, if you want to capture any potential upside from your options, you're required to execute them, paying your own money for actual shares. Depending on the amount of equity you have, this may or may not be a meaningful amount of money, but it is in any case a painful decision to have to make.<p>Companies like Pinterest have done things to address this flaw; they allow employees who no longer work at the firm to retain their vested options without executing them for several years.