Captain Suave
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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Hey bros.
So my wife finds herself in a position of leverage. Her employer, a mid-sized health care AI firm, is being acquired in the very near term future. She is head of the 10-person data science department and has been there essentially since founding 10 years ago. She is the #1 key employee in the organization, to the point where if she is not retained the acquisition does not move forward. She's been instructed to produce a list of retention demands and told that basically everything is on the table. At present, we own a few tenths of a percent of the company in outright stock and have vested options worth another few tenths but are unlikely to be in the money for this transaction. (The company has been hurting during the pandemic and their current private equity owners just want their investment back.)
Has anyone been through a similar situation, on either end? Any advice on how to structure the demands? Pitfalls to avoid? Our first instinct is to ask for a doubling of her salary with a guaranteed three-year payout even if she is released in the interim, plus the conversion of her options into outright stock. This represents total compensation increase of roughly enough to send our kids to top-tier colleges and pay off a mortgage in LA. Too much, too little, or about right? Wrong structure?
Thoughts appreciated.
#firstworldproblems
So my wife finds herself in a position of leverage. Her employer, a mid-sized health care AI firm, is being acquired in the very near term future. She is head of the 10-person data science department and has been there essentially since founding 10 years ago. She is the #1 key employee in the organization, to the point where if she is not retained the acquisition does not move forward. She's been instructed to produce a list of retention demands and told that basically everything is on the table. At present, we own a few tenths of a percent of the company in outright stock and have vested options worth another few tenths but are unlikely to be in the money for this transaction. (The company has been hurting during the pandemic and their current private equity owners just want their investment back.)
Has anyone been through a similar situation, on either end? Any advice on how to structure the demands? Pitfalls to avoid? Our first instinct is to ask for a doubling of her salary with a guaranteed three-year payout even if she is released in the interim, plus the conversion of her options into outright stock. This represents total compensation increase of roughly enough to send our kids to top-tier colleges and pay off a mortgage in LA. Too much, too little, or about right? Wrong structure?
Thoughts appreciated.
#firstworldproblems
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