Suppose an employee of a non-public company has "some" stock options. Can that person, after vesting, generally transfer the ownership of some of those (exercised) shares to another party?
I want to reveal as little as possible, but... a friend of mine is working for a startup with a meaningful stock option plan. He has found himself on an "improvement plan" shortly before his first big vesting cliff. All signs seem to indicate that they have set up unreasonable goals for him and just want a nice, unambiguous metric they can point to when they fire him.
His "goals" intersect with my skills nicely and he has asked me to help him get through this. As a friend, I'm happy to help. But if I put forth the effort required, I could in theory spend many, many hours on this and see much frustration.
He has offered to compensate me, but in very non-specific terms. What I had in mind from the beginning was "5% of this particular chunk of stock options". But there are obviously (in retrospect) many complicating factors. What if he choses to hang on to the stock, while it plummets, or conversely chooses to sell it as the value skyrockets, etc, etc.
What would be more cut-and-dried would be 5% of this particular chunk of stock options... in the form of stock.
Is that possible? If not, do any alternatives come to mind? Do I need to just call a lawyer now... or?