How common is it to withhold info about dilution?

Question

I've been with a startup through two funding rounds, and growth has been very healthy.I recently asked leadership how much I've been diluted, just for financial planning purposes. I assume I've been diluted "a normal amount" and am fine with that-- I just need to know the number. Instead I got a non-answer from leadership, which surprised me. So I'm curious:- How common is this practice in mid-stage startups? - What is the actual rationale for withholding this information? I get why companies may want to keep the cap table confidential, but an employee's dilution factor seems like the kind of thing that doesn't matter for cap table confidentiality, but matters a lot to the employee.Thanks in advance for any color or perspective on this.

jerf · Accepted Answer

Fairly common from what I've seen. You're supposed to ooh and aah at the number of options they give you and not ask question about what they're actually going to be worth. This is one of the bigger reasons HN tends to advise people to treat stock options like lottery tickets rather than any sort of money in the bank. You generally have no idea what they've done to your "options" between giving them to you and you finally getting to exercise them, especially with the ever-lengthening time it takes for companies to finally go public. On the plus side, this has also driven the creation of other ways of getting options out of a company prior to an IPO.

icedchai · Answer

Very common. If you do get a number of out them, it is meaningless without understanding other details, like the liquidation preferences that may be held by current investors.

bix6 · Answer

They can give you a few numbers without sharing the detailed cap table. Will they though? :p You could try to get around it by asking the last 409A valuation.