Upside is an easy-to-use free calculator that helps you figure out how to value your startup shares or options and helps you make a decision on whether to exercise your shares.
My co-founder and I launched this tool in order to help engineers, designers and other startup team members figure out what to do with their shares π€π€π€. With many people being laid off or furloughed, we wanted to give actionable data to employees who have expiring options β οΈβ οΈβ οΈ.
This is a passion project for my team and I and we may end up turning this into a business, but for now there is no charge or monetization π°.
So cool to be part of the projects with a vision π
David and Hans have a very deep understanding of the topic, so it was fantastic to help to create something so useful for a lot of folks, working with the pros.
The app is fully built without code and running 100% on the Bubble framework, so it took us just a few days to build, polish, and launch.
Big thanks to everyone involved - we hope you will find it interesting and helpful.
Team at Zeroqode is upen to any feedback, so please tell us what you think π
By no means, it is easy to determine value of your start up shares.
But, you will be giving people highly valuable data in exchange for some relatively simple number crunching that is not going to be accurate for most of start ups.
It is not that hard to determine the value of your options.
Start with: the price from last round X your vested option plus a Y% (an arbitrary number) to give you some buffer. But this only provide you a reference from the past.
Ultimately, you worked there and you should have a sense if the company has a future you believe in. If you don't believe in it, don't exercise or only exercise partially (think of them like a lottery).
* If you are somewhat investment savvy, you can also browse Forge/EquityZen/Sharepost to find out past transaction price.
Upside