Should You Quit Your Job At A Unicorn? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:00)
As far as you can tell, the metrics are excellent. The founders are extremely focused.
Your colleagues are very smart, and you were very impressed continuing to work with them. You should probably stay a really long time.

**Michael Seibel** (0:11)
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what Google looks like, what Facebook looks like.
Welcome to Dalton & Michael. Today, we'd like to do a follow-up on a video that we recorded a year ago. That video was Why You Should Leave Your Fang Job.

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:28)
We all know these people that want to just tell you their darkest secret, which is they wake up every day and they like dream of quitting.
Like they have fantasies of quitting every day. Those are people that probably should quit.

**Michael Seibel** (0:42)
This video is Why Maybe You Should Leave Your Failing Unicorn Startup. Tricky topic.

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:52)
And let's say signals. We don't know, we don't have all the information.
But there might be some hints, there might be some signs you want to be looking for that it might be time to reach greener pastures.

**Michael Seibel** (1:04)
And if you're an employee of one of these companies, you probably have the best perspective, a better perspective than investors, maybe sometimes even better perspective than founders on what's really going on.
So maybe we should start this by saying there are 1,400 unicorns now. Is that right? Yeah.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:23)
Wow.

**Michael Seibel** (1:24)
Well, I'll ask you, I don't know what you think. Do you think all 1,400 will go public successfully?

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:30)
I think the odds are pretty slim that they're all doing amazing. I think that's a fair statement.

**Michael Seibel** (1:35)
I think that's a fair statement. And so if you kind of divide this out, even if you're really optimistic, like what do you think an optimistic count, what percentage of the 1,400 were being super optimistic they do an IPO and everyone's really happy?

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:53)
A third? I'm just making this up. A third?

**Michael Seibel** (1:55)
A third. Great.
So in that case, two thirds of that 1,400, it's not gonna work out. And I think what's unfortunate is that like when things don't work out, employees usually don't.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:08)
They are, yeah. And the who takes one for the team, they're usually in the category here to take one for the team. And again, like brass tacks here, what this means is your equity, most likely if you joined a unicorn that is late stage, the strike price of your options is going to be tied to the valuation that the company raised at.
And so if the company is sold for less or if it's perhaps overvalued, your options are likely underwater.
This is just a simple fact of life. And often the people running these companies don't love this line of questioning. And so we're just sort of telling you the truth, which is the later you joined a company, the higher your strike price will be on options. And so the folks that are most likely, most of the people weren't hired at the end of the, you know, when they became unicorns, a lot of people came in. So the strike prices are very high.

**Michael Seibel** (2:59)
Yes.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:00)
And so, man, you just, you need to be smart.

**Michael Seibel** (3:03)
Well, and the second thing is if they do end an acquisition, and many will end an acquisition, oftentimes you have to re-interview for your job. Like oftentimes they don't want to bring everyone over in the acquisition. And so that's tricky. And also you might end up at the big tech company you were running away from.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:22)
That's right.

**Michael Seibel** (3:23)
When you're doing a startup. So I think I'd love to put in a kind of a little bit of a note here.
I think that those 30% that will do well will probably do counter-intuitively well.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:38)
Like really well.

**Michael Seibel** (3:40)
Yeah, like very well, extremely well. Yeah, even going to work at those companies now is probably a good idea.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:47)
Absolutely.

**Michael Seibel** (3:47)
Yeah, and so I think that's what's so tricky about this is you have to be smart. You can't really be like following the bullshit press or stuff.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:55)
Yeah, or like the memes on Twitter about what's doing well and not doing well.

**Michael Seibel** (3:59)
You gotta attack this.

**Dalton Caldwell** (4:00)
Let's be specific. So Michael, what would you do if you were an employee, say you were a software engineer.

**Michael Seibel** (4:04)