Urban Company ESOP Buyback

Hi GVers, For those who've seen their company IPO (Zomato, Nykaa, PayTM, Delhivery etc.) during their tenure, by how much did you ESOP value appreciate after the IPO? Also, how long before the IPO had you joined the company? For those who've seen buybacks and secondary sales in their company How much did your ESOP value appreciate during such events, if any? How long ago before the event had you joined the company? PS: I've heard ESOP value for some IPO borne companies appreciate by 2x after the IPO.

Urbancompany announces its biggest ESOP buyback of 203Cr where 446 employee will participate. In the era of layoffs be a UC 🙃

Truths about ESOP 101 After working in multiple fast growth startup’s and having been part of multiple buybacks as well as being in the startup ecosystem for a decade I want to put to bear my pov about creating wealth through ESOP. Like any other randomised event, ESOP also follows Pareto principle which means a very small number of people within the company ever make sizable wealth that they elevate to the top 0.1% of the country. The Pareto also applies with companies; significantly small minority of companies in India have employee friendly policies which enables an employee to create wealth. Most startup’s have dark patterns within their esop policy which either locks you in for insufferable durations or forces you to pay exorbitant taxes to gain the right to exercise your esops when you are leaving the company. Survivorship bias plays a huge role in enabling the narrative that esop is a great wealth generating tool leading to rude awakening for an employee after they join a company. This doesn’t mean you can’t make wealth, it just means don’t get carried away by narratives and take preventable errors in your career. Always talk to multiple people in startup’s and ask relevant questions to understand esop policies better. Like everything else optimising only for esop for wealth creation will mostly not result in it.

Where did you work and how much money did you make? Asking as it looks like a lot of promise of ESOPs and wealth creation has failed employees in this bloodbath slow growth, layoffs, and job changes.

It's always something to look forward to in a startup. But wanting to know if it's actually meaningful. Are you making good money from it? Anybody around you who is making good money from it. This would really help a lot of us in startups know what to expect 🙏

Fast learning and fast paced growth aside, after 15 years of MNC experience I joined a startup to get some ESOPs.. and hopefully a good buyback .. I have worked in 2 startups now.Both of these were already Unicorns when I joined . While I love the culture and dynamic pace of a startup i feel my chances of getting a payout are slim... My personal learning is to get a good reward you have to be in top 10 employees for sure ... otherwise it's not worth it .. There is no point joining a Unicorn in middle management...or second in command in any function... Happy to hear your thoughts !

Hey everyone, excited to be doing this AMA! A brief about me, I work currently as a Director of Product at an Indian unicorn startup About my career: - Did my undergrad from IIT and then masters from an Ivy league school - Have been in product for almost 10 years now - across 2 Indian unicorn startups and a publicly listed company Would love to take questions on what it means to be a PM, growing within the role, building your career, and other things :) Will be back here at 4 pm and start replying Shoot away!

So Bewakoof got acquired by Aditya Birla group and sent a mail to employees that their ESOPs are now worthless “as determined by the board.” I mean, I know what they’re doing is completely legal, they must have covered themselves with escape clauses, but how are founders okay with this? They basically ripped off and wiped off the wealth of the very employees that worked for them for years. Shameful, man! Never buying from this shit company again. Not that it will matter, but won’t give a penny to this hideous organization.