Traditional option lenders ignore rank-and-file employees for multi-million dollar executives
Dave Thornton · Dave Thornton – Unlocking Venture Access Through Stock Options at Vested (EP.469) · Nov 6, 2025 · at 12:41
Dave Thornton, co-founder and CEO of Vested, discusses the competitive landscape for startup equity financing and why established financial institutions ignore smaller option exercise requests.
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“What we saw was the commonality between all of them. I just described a very crowded market was that they were all focused on senior people that were leaving really late stage private companies. And so if you need twelve million dollars and you just left Stripe, everybody falls over you in order to get you your money and you have price competition and you get to choose from different structures with different risk reward profiles.”
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