Some people join startups to change the world, some join to escape corporate bureaucracy — and others join because they know there's a chance they could make a bucketload of money by cashing in on stock options down the line.
And on the whole, our latest Sifted reader survey finds, startup employees in Europe are fairly optimistic about the outcome for their options: more than a quarter of respondents said they think they’ll make enough money to angel invest or start their own company; while 12.6% said they think they’ll end up with a life changing amount of money.
Nearly one-third were less positive, expecting the value of their options to go to nothing.
That said, over 40% of our 198 respondents don’t actually know how much their options are worth — indicating that there’s still plenty of education to be done around stock options in Europe’s startup ecosystem.
More than 40% of employees don’t know what their options are worth
The majority (58.6%) of European startup employees Sifted surveyed know how much their options are worth; 41.4% told us they don’t know. Meanwhile, only 60.6% of respondents know their company’s latest valuation; 39.4% don’t.
Plenty of employees are also in the dark about what to do with their stock options; 44.3% of our survey respondents said their company hadn’t explained how to exercise stock options.
There’s ambition in Europe
Despite some of these knowledge gaps, more than a quarter (26.3%) of respondents said they think the likely outcome of them owning stock options is that they make enough money to angel invest or start their own company.
12.6% said they think they’ll end up with a life changing amount of money.
If their dreams come true, they would follow in the tracks of former employees from the likes of fintechs Onfido — which told Sifted its acquisition earlier this year made more than a dozen employees millionaires — Wise and Skype.
Other respondents had less lofty expectations — 31.3% said the likely outcome would be they’d make enough for a nice holiday. Nearly one-third (29.8%) said the likely outcome is their options go to zero or they get almost nothing.
Stock options can help you win the war for talent
The promise of stock options does incentivise people to join European startups. Our survey found that of the 91.9% of respondents who have stock options, more than two-thirds (67%) wouldn’t have joined their company if they weren’t offered them, compared to 33% who said they would.
That said, companies don’t give everyone options on joining. Just over half of respondents (50.5%) said everyone at their company was given stock options; 35.9% said not everyone was; 13.6% said they didn’t know.
