[acroback]

No they are not, speaking from experience.

One debt financing round and your golden stocks lose 90% of its value. It's worse when you have exercised your options.

Plus you won't get class A stocks, class B or worse, which means you won't make much unless company goes public and goes big like FB or Google.

[spullara]

This makes 0 sense except in a failing startup where the stock isn't worth much to anyone, including the founders and investors.

[acroback]

Well it does makes sense because this is the ground reality, not all startups make it. Engineers never get preferred shares no matter how hard we try to think so.

Class shares are a thing to protect investor money not engineer interest.

[spullara]

But they are irrelevant in a successful startup and no one really wins in an unsuccessful startup. At most preferred shares get invested funds back unless the startup took some really bad deal with multiple liquidation preferences. What I would say is that in an unsuccessful startup engineers are likely to make out better in an acquihire than the investors do.

[loeg]

Most startups fail.