At one point in my career (OK, it was last week), I was shaking out the couch cushions, searching for nickels and dimes to pay for my stock options and cover the taxes (!?!) that came along with exercising them. In my moment of illiquidity and tax incredulity I discovered Secfi, a company unlocking private company equity.
I got the chance to speak with Frederik Mijnhardt, CEO & Co-founder at Secfi. Along the way we touched on a number of tips that can help employees (like me and you) better manage their equity outcomes.
Here’s the TL;DR of the topics we covered, and my favorite sound bites:
Starting SecFi, and the equity learning curve
“I realized that it would cost me almost $2 million in taxes to own my equity, which seemed insane to me.”
Unlocking the value in your private equity
“Most commonly, we see startup employees who are bullish on their company but either can’t afford the exercise costs, or have other financial goals or obligations like a downpayment on a house, using Secfi Financing.”
Advice for startup employees evaluating their equity situations
“On average, startup employees have 86% of their wealth tied up in their company’s equity.”
Running a company
The other thing that was surprising at first is that a lot of CEOs, CFOs, founders, etc. also don’t fully understand equity themselves. So, while they want to pass on knowledge to the rest of the company, they just don’t know where to begin.”
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