[Matt_Mickiewicz]

Early exercise makes the most sense for seed stage companies where the exercise price is still low... at companies where you have to spend $50K or more to exercise, I've seen loans being handed out by the company to its executives to make it possible for them to take advantage of it.

[lhnguyen09]

Any insight into why a company wouldn't allow forward exercising? The legal/finance team at my company refused to do it, though I wasn't given an explanation why.

[hundt]

* It's extra hassle/paperwork.

* Employees have less incentive to stay because they won't run into the AMT "handcuff" situation (where if they leave they have to exercise their options or lose them, and they can't afford to pay the taxes to exercise the options).

* More employees will actually exercise their options before liquidity, which means more minority shareholders.