Originally Posted by BeatNavy

Tech startups fail a lot as well. They don’t always turn into Google or Facebook or Twitter. It’s always a gamble. But with an airline like breeze set to grow from nothing to a 100-150 airplane company in 5ish years, that valuation will potentially grow rapidly. And it isn’t really a financial plan, it’s more of part of the risk/reward equation for going to a startup (along with seniority), and a monetary one that *may* compensate for initial low wages. The idea with the airline startup paying in equity is to have it long enough for the airline to go public, still in growth stage, at which point you have the option to cash out (or hold, I guess, but holding stock long term in the company you work for isn’t a great idea). That was one reason B6 got away with low wages initially, and some of those guys made out really well (some didn’t). It’s just something like profit sharing in that that isn’t guaranteed to pay out, but can move the needle in getting people in the door, and is an IOU of sorts, not really a scheme or promise that the stock will go parabolic and get rich…just something additional on top of and to partially make up for initial low wages.

I’d cut the breeze guys more slack if this were the case. Instead, they got a chance to put their own money into the company. Which is insanity when you think about it. It’s one thing to receive equity as compensation, but when you have to pay your own money, while already being underpaid, to invest in an airline startup at which you work…yikes.