[zenlikethat]

Correct. You can claw back a chunk every year until you have that AMT paid back so depending on your inflation and investment opportunity cost expectations you are not actually risking that much money, just the cost of the shares.

I think that really speaks volumes to how relevant it is to join early stage if you want to play the options game - later stage companies _seem_ safer but may not actually be that much safer if you consider everyone already in the investment aggressively driving the price of the shares up and forcing you to risk more on exercise.