Scott's post genuinely makes me angry. It uses subtle language to imply that employees are inferior individuals who are lucky that the owners of capital deign to share anything with them.

In Scott's worldview, choosing to leave a company before it has exited is inherently disloyal. Even if they're paying you under market. Even if you could contribute more value elsewhere.

I wonder if he would accept similar terms:

1. Reduce his salary at a16z to something minimal. (<$100k)

2. He only gets his carry in a company if he invests in every subsequent round. If they ever decline to follow-on, it's clearly a sign of "disloyalty" and they should forfeit all equity.

I agree with Adam that it's at least nice to see the owners of capital so nakedly betraying their worldview (diversification is all well and good for them, but employees owe infinite loyalty).

I will think long and hard before ever working for a company where Scott is on the board.

This part is particularly troubling:

> One existing solution to the “dead equity” problem has been — and still can be — to make exceptions where appropriate for certain exiting employees.

It's essentially an argument for cronyism. The people who most need equity extensions are those unlikely to have the connections and political savvy to get them. I strongly suspect such systems would work to further disadvantaged already disadvantaged groups.

Firstly, while I think Scott is wrong, I don't see much that's disrespectful or implying disloyalty about his tone. Not even the stuff about "dead equity."

I'll extend some comments I made downthread:

a16z is a major investor (growth round resulting in a board seat for a16z) in many of the companies that have extended vesting periods, such as Coinbase, Pinterest, Asana, and Tilt (list here: https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows). They also invested in CodeCombat and I'm sure some other startups on that list (I didn't check them all). So I seriously doubt they block companies from doing extended exercise windows.

And claiming that those companies were/are hot and therefore had leverage is a bit circular because hot companies are the kinds of companies a16z often funds in growth rounds (and often it is because a16z funded you that makes you hot).