[tptacek]

Issuing shares directly to employees is kind of uncommon. Do your shares have a buyback on them?

I'm not clear why you think you might have a claim on all 5000 shares. Can you be a little clearer about this? You didn't really share a timeline of your employment, so it's hard to reason this out from first principles.

Assume you get all 5000 shares. How much is that going to be worth? Low/mid/hi-how-many-figures?

[ktavera]

Because the contract stated that upon employment there would be a grant of 5000 shares that would vest annually or in a liquidity event would vest immediately, with no mention of forfeiture. Valuation is hard to determine since the former CEO is non-responsive, all I know is others with the same equity position received significant payouts.

[tptacek]

You never know, you could have the world's most poorly written stock vesting contract, but it seems very unlikely that their vesting scheme was designed so that vesting didn't matter in the one case where vesting actually does matter. You don't need a "forfeiture" clause for vesting to have teeth. You'd probably need to share more of the details for us to noodle around any further with this.

(If you've got any kind of confidentiality agreement with your former employer, don't share details.)