Turning Expiring Options Into Venture Exposure [Vested’s Dave Thornton] | #597

Today’s guest is Dave Thornton, co-founder & Chief Customer Officer of Vested, which helps startup employees unlock the value in their equity. In today’s episode, Dave walks through the messy reality of startup stock options, noting $600 billion of startup equity is abandoned over a market cycle. He explains how Vested helps solve this problem by providing funding to help employees exercise their expiring stock options, in exchange for exposure to a portion of the now-owned shares. Dave also previews Vestimate, a tool to track the fair-market value of your equity over time that’s already reducing abandonment, and shares practical takeaways for employees, advisors, and allocators seeking exposure to venture capital. (0:00) Starts (0:34) Dave Thornton explains Vested (9:35) Vested's selection model, data sources, and proprietary insights (17:22) Vested's investment strategy and funds (21:19) Trends in IPOs (23:13) Venture exposure (26:18) Introducing the Vestimate (31:12) Future goals for Vested (37:38) Final remarks ----- Follow Meb on X, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Follow The Idea Farm: X | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at [email protected] ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more.  ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here!  -----Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices