Google to staffer: Do you want $4000 or 4000 shares? Staffer A chose the $4000. Staffer B chose the shares...and is now $1.7M richer. OUCH.
This short blurb appeared over at Good Morning Silicon Valley and was written by John Paczkowski. It is short and refers to a Wall Street Journal article (that requires a subscription) so I have quoted it here in full. This person HAS to be hating the fact that her colleague chose Option B. But how would you know? It’s part of the wild randomness of the universe.
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If you’re kicking yourself for sitting the Google IPO out, don’t be too hard on yourself. There are plenty of other folks out there whose lack of foresight was far more profound than yours. Take Emily Cikovsky<<< who along with an associate once moonlighted for Google, preparing PowerPoint slides and speaking notes that co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page used to announce their first venture-capital funding. Brin and Page offered to pay Cikovsky in cash or options. Cikovsky chose cash; her associate chose options. Cikovsky went home with a check for $4000, her associate with options for 4,000 shares that after two stock splits are today worth $1.7 million. “Do I wish I’d had the shares? Yes,” Cikovsky told the Wall Street Journal. But “what’s always in the back of my mind is an IPO is never a guarantee … and nine out of 10 start-ups fail.”
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