I've been thinking of putting together something simple to analyze employee option paperwork and add some plain English annotations to help employees understand exactly what they're signing. Based on my experience, there's something like 5 or so templates that cover 90% of the startups in the valley, so shouldn't be too hard. Is there any interest in something like this?
We at Casetext are interested in this space as well. Our annotations technology will undergo some major improvements in the near future, but even the way they are today may be sufficient to meet your needs. Hit me up (jake at casetext.com) if you want to work together to make this a reality. Here's an example of what docs look like on Casetext now: https://casetext.com/contract/simple-agreement-for-future-eq...
This would be fantastically useful. Please, do this. I looked, hard, for this in the last month. If you need it, I'll talk to my employer about creating a template with dummy information based on my package.
I agree that a resource like this would be incredibly valuable for startups and employees outside of the valley too. Even though they may not have the same details, the annotations may help explain general concepts and terms which are important.
I had a comment on another thread recently proposing something in a similar vein to help employees understand what their stock options mean/are worth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7584320
Please do this! It's not just valley startups that are confused by this -- other cities are too. And as you say, there are usually 5 templates that cover the vast majority of cases.
