They were ISO's, I only knew how many shares I was granted, but by the time of the exit, following several rounds of funding, it ended up being around 0.02%.
I'm not sure if this question is really applicable since you weren't there for very long before the IPO, but do you know what the Series A -> IPO dilution of shares looked like?
IIRC there's still a limit of 2,000 shareholders for private companies.
So if those employee options transfer to outside buyers, they potentially hit the 2K limit really fast.
btw - Nearly this same set of circumstances forced the FB IPO. Dozens of early employees were allowed to sell their shares pre-IPO, triggering the max private shareholder rule.
As someone pointed out above, this deal seems to be modeled after DST’s 2009 tender offer for Facebook shares - they paid a 35% discount for common shares from employees and early investors. DST cashed out in the IPO making a return of around ~18x.
I think the original grant (4-year vesting etc) must have been for around 1,000 shares. and I joined pre-IPO. but I agree it was not a large grant, even for an entry-level position. Nonetheless it's the only one I've gotten that's worth anything right now!
They sold 32.5 million shares at $72 apiece, raising $2.3 billion. If you really believe that the 'true' price was the first transaction on the open market, then they left about $400m on the table, not four billion.
The s1 listed 50m shares as coming from existing share holders but they did not break it out. Usually that is employees with vested shares and occasionally other investors. Was more common in the dot com IPO's but Zynga did that too as I recall
As I understand it, the initial sales were first to institutional investors. By the time you or I had a chance to purchase any, it was already at $30/share (it's at $28/share now).
reply