I'll second my name-twin's sentiments and add:

It's fantastic to see a dividend based model being introduced into early round VC fundraising. It's an alternative to liquidity and something that should/can move upstream. Bravo to Buffer for leading the charge.

The large problem, that's becoming larger, is that a good portion of a representative audience no longer has land line phones, and refuses to answer phones in general. This type of polling is becoming less and less valuable over time, and will need to be transitioned to digital polling in the near future.

I refuse to participate in these wastes of my time (I have far more entertaining things to waste my time with).

I do, however, make every effort to exercise my right to vote so that I earn the privilege of 'complaining' about results I dislike (what I voted for didn't win, what I voted for sold us out, the thing I wanted to vote for wasn't an option because of gerrymandering (which is what any form of distracting is)).

The key here is a federal law which outlaws the use of automated dialers to dial mobile phone numbers.

That means that any polling firm that wants to poll people via their mobile phones needs to employ a bunch of humans to laboriously dial every single candidate number--and get hung up on repeatedly. This makes polling mobile phones much more expensive than polling landlines, where you can use a computer to try numbers until someone agrees to take the poll. So most folks will not bother, or will only do very small mobile polls, occasionally.

This was a significant factor in a bunch of Republicans getting a nasty surprise on election night 2012. They simply underestimated how many people without landlines would turn out to vote against them.

How do you manage official communications internally? Announcements, HR, etc?

Slack is the main “channel” for all of that type of information. And/but, I would say, 80% of the time, it is a link to a longer post in hackpad with more details, and a request for comment.

Also know in NWS speak as a thermoshack.

This would be similar to this acquisition IMO: http://www.macworld.com/article/2083997/apple-acquires-snapp...

That is the most offensive representation of poutine I've ever seen.

It looks like a Philly Cheesesteak exploded on some french fries.

Adding to Sam's post I'd like to see employees made aware about tools like 83(b) elections to decrease their tax liability.

I actually had to explain 83(b) elections to HR at my current job. I don't think it's just employees that need to be made aware of them...

I have tried to figure this out: is there any point to doing forward exercise and 83(b) election with ISO options, which is what most employees get?

do you (or anyone else) know what happens if you do an 83b election then leave the company before 4 years?

Also, this doesn't really help post A, particularly if you're getting pretty senior and have a bunch of experience. At my last place, I would have had a $50k bill to do an 83b. I could write that check but goddamn is that a lot of cash to part with.

edit: thank you @rosser

Typically, the company will buy back unvested shares at the strike price if you've forward exercised them.

Ask to forward exercise when joining. From what I understand, there isn't a negative impact on the employer, you are just being granted RSU's that they have an option to buy back for $0 before your cliff, and then convert to ISO's at your cliff. You can file that 83b election immediately, which will substantially drop your tax burden.

Yep, we offered this to all of our employees at Hired after our seed round, but before our $15m Series-A. The majority took the early exercise option once they understood it.

It's a massive lift for our team (based on tax savings) when an eventual liquidity event occurs, with no downside for the company other than additional paperwork and some legal costs.

right right, but I have to (1) come up with $50k in cash (in my example), and (2) if the job isn't working out, I want the fraction of my initial payment back upon leaving and it isn't clear this happens...

Early exercise makes the most sense for seed stage companies where the exercise price is still low... at companies where you have to spend $50K or more to exercise, I've seen loans being handed out by the company to its executives to make it possible for them to take advantage of it.

Any insight into why a company wouldn't allow forward exercising? The legal/finance team at my company refused to do it, though I wasn't given an explanation why.

* It's extra hassle/paperwork.

* Employees have less incentive to stay because they won't run into the AMT "handcuff" situation (where if they leave they have to exercise their options or lose them, and they can't afford to pay the taxes to exercise the options).

* More employees will actually exercise their options before liquidity, which means more minority shareholders.

The loop on the end is for opening beers.

Its rubberized. Would be pretty hard to open a beer bottle with it. :)

A lot easier. I imagine you have never opened a beer bottle with a paper handkerchief?

I can see selling replacements.

Like you don't want to see the Red Sox, maybe the yankees pay to replace all things red socks.

That would completely defeat the purpose of the extension.

Well, if I say that I'd rather see Yankees news instead of Red Sox posts, different baseball sites could pay to have their Yankees content be what replaces the Red Sox content.

Good tidbit in the conclusion: "Hackathons are an amazing resource for kick-starting new ideas and proving out concepts. However, they should never be used to circumvent due diligence on big business decisions."