[d2ncal]

Great article. One thing that he forgets to mention is to let employees "Pre Exercise" the options.

For a very young startup (even for Series A), the shares are still worth pennies per share, and letting employees pre-exercise the shares not only saves them from AMT but also lets the long term capital gains kick-in sooner.

Only a few startups that I've seen do this, and its really effective specially for employees.