PrivateTechShares

PrivateTechShares is an information and tools resource for people who hold equity in private companies. It is built for founders, co-founders, current and former employees with vested options or ESOP grants, and early angels who want a clear picture of what their shares are worth before a liquidity event. The core problem it addresses is that most knowledge about private-company equity sits with venture capitalists, angel investors and professional advisers, while the people who earned the equity are left with an opaque process, no easy valuation, and large secondary platforms that rarely handle smaller transactions. PrivateTechShares closes that gap with plain-English guides, free browser-based calculators and a paid preparation toolkit covering the United States and seven European countries.

What Makes PrivateTechShares Stand Out

• Free valuation and exercise tools: A share value estimator, an exit waterfall calculator, an option exercise calculator and an AMT-aware version for US taxpayers run in the browser with no sign-up and no data stored.
• Sourced, dated country tax guides: Transfer and tax playbooks for the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, each showing where the figures come from and the year they apply to.
• Preparation over advice: The paid Equity Toolkit is an eight-phase, A to Z deal map with explicit STOP points that mark exactly when a lawyer, tax adviser or notary should take over, plus editable documents and ready-to-send messages.
• Coverage of 250+ private companies: Guides for individual names such as OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Revolut, Monzo, Helsing and Mistral AI, alongside US pre-IPO and EU unicorn indexes.
• No brokerage in the middle: PrivateTechShares does not hold shares, introduce buyers or take a cut of any transaction. It prepares the shareholder to act on their own terms.

Who Should Use PrivateTechShares

• Founders and early shareholders who need a realistic value range for common shares, adjusted for preference stacks, dilution and tax, and who want a clear paperwork path for a small secondary sale.
• Employees and leavers holding ESOP options who need to understand exercise cost, the US alternative minimum tax trap, the roughly 90-day post-departure exercise window, and whether vesting, a right of first refusal or board approval will block a transfer.
• Early angels and small private shareholders in the US or Europe whose stake size falls below the minimums of institutional secondary platforms such as Forge, EquityZen or Nasdaq Private Market.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my startup equity worth anything before an exit?

Often yes, but usually less than the headline price from the last funding round. Most founders and employees hold common shares, which carry less value than the preferred shares investors bought, and the position is illiquid. A discount is typically applied to reflect company stage and buyer demand. PrivateTechShares offers a free estimator that returns a realistic range rather than a single figure.

What does it cost to exercise stock options?

You pay the strike price set in your grant for each share you exercise. On top of that, exercise can trigger a tax charge: in the United States the alternative minimum tax may apply to incentive stock options. Because options are not shares until exercised, that cost must be funded before any sale can happen. Free calculators give a rough figure, and the toolkit lists the exact tax questions to bring to an adviser.

Do I need the company's permission to sell my shares?

Usually there are transfer restrictions. A right of first refusal, board approval or company consent clause is common in shareholder agreements. These are procedural hurdles rather than hard blocks: the seller clears them with the company or board before completing the transfer, which is why the toolkit includes draft waiver requests, a document checklist and a readiness audit.