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by hspak 2688 days ago
Does anyone actually understand the consequences of turning ISO's into NSO's?

It's easy for someone to say "oh yeah, just convert the ISOs to non-quals and give me my 10 year exercise window". What does it actually mean for the companies (and yourself on the other side) to support this?

2 comments

We went through a giant hassle to provide this for our employees. Oddly enough, they don't appear to give a shit. At all. My cofounder and I thought this would be a big selling point.

The downside to an employer is: first, you know that in a 90-day exercise or lose them world, lots of ex-employees don't exercise. That's great for your options pool. Second, our employees seem not to care. Third, anything nonstandard raises questions in future rounds. Fourth, there's apparently some more complex tax accounting according to our cfo.

I don't know the exact consequences for the company, but my employer gave employees the option to convert ISOs to NSOs to give us a 10 year exercise window. It was a really nice thing to do because I for one couldn't afford to exercise my options.