[cco]

Penny wise and pound foolish in my experience for early stage startups.

Don't rush into it obviously, take a few weeks/months inside to get a feel for financials, the business/team etc, but early exercise if you can afford it.

Early exercising may risk tens to low hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the upside is hundreds of thousands to millions through long term cap gains and/or QSBS tax savings.

It also protects you from losing your options if you leave the company, two years into your tenure you might want to leave, but the strike to fair market value spread might have grown so much that you can't afford it in your post termination exercise window.

As always, super dependent upon your particular deal, your financial position going into it etc, do your own math and risk tolerance, but I wish someone had shown me the numbers before I joined my first startup.