About The Vesting Desk

The Vesting Desk explains startup equity to the people who hold it. SAFEs, option pools, dilution, cliffs, preference stacks and what actually happens to your shares when a company is sold. The rules are knowable; most people meet them years too late.

We write for anyone who owns, or is about to own, a piece of something — founders and employees alike. Equity is the part of compensation people are most often asked to accept without being told how it works, and that asymmetry is the reason this publication exists.

What we cover

• Equity — what you hold, in the terms the paperwork actually uses
• Fundraising Mechanics — how a round changes your position, in numbers
• Exits — what happens to whom when a company is sold, in what order
• Startup Watch — companies whose equity story is worth following

How we work

Every explainer is checked against primary sources — the documents themselves, not summaries of them — and worked examples show their arithmetic so you can substitute your own figures. Nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice, and outcomes depend on your specific paperwork. Every piece passes human editorial review.