Sanket Nayak retweetledi
EQUITY VESTING
I’m starting to see more founders put into place 6 year vests for founding / early employees, and I think it really aligns incentives around thinking long term and sticking around to build an enduring company.
Founders: don’t take 4 year vests as written in stone. Rethink it from first principles, considering what you’re trying to build.
4 years made sense in an era when the average time to IPO was 4-5 years. That era is gone. The best companies today take 10-15 years to reach their full potential. If your vest schedule is shorter than your ambition, you’ve created a misalignment.
A few things worth rethinking:
•Cliff length (discussed above)
•Back-weighted schedules (more equity in years 4-6, not front-loaded; Amazon has done this for many years?
•Refresh cadence (how do you keep people incentivized post-vest without diluting everyone?)
The vest schedule is a cultural document. It signals how long you think this will take, and how serious you are about people staying for the whole ride.
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