Options are the right to buy shares at a fixed "strike" price after vesting — valuable only if the company’s value rises above it. Ask for the strike price, total shares outstanding, and your post-departure exercise window.
Startup offers lean on options, and the number of options alone tells you almost nothing. The value drivers: strike price (you profit only above it), percentage ownership (10,000 options mean nothing without knowing total shares outstanding — ask for the fully-diluted count), vesting (typically four years, one-year cliff), and the trap most people learn too late — the post-termination exercise window, commonly just 90 days after leaving, in which you must pay cash to exercise or forfeit everything vested. ISOs and NSOs are taxed differently, and exercising has its own tax events (including potential AMT for ISOs). Before valuing an offer on its options, get the numbers that make them mean something.
Unvested options are forfeited; vested ones typically must be exercised (paid for) within a short window — commonly 90 days — or they expire.
You need the strike price, the current share value (409A or last round), and your percentage of fully-diluted shares. Options are worth the spread above strike — potentially zero.
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