Curated by Vinod Kumar Jain & Amit Jain · All Frontier Global · free, no login
What is an option grant worth on paper? Count, strike price, the current valuation you were quoted, the vesting period and your own dilution assumption give an intrinsic figure, what vests each year, and what exercising would cost you. Paper value is not cash — illiquidity, taxes, liquidation preferences and future rounds all cut it, and this tool models none of them.
The arithmetic, in order
Intrinsic value per share = current price − strike, floored at zero. Under water means zero here, not a negative number.
Paper value of the grant = intrinsic per share × number of options
After your dilution assumption = paper value × (1 − dilution %)
Vesting each year = the dilution-adjusted figure ÷ vesting years, with nothing vesting before the cliff
Cost to exercise the whole grant = strike × number of options — cash you must find, before any tax
What this deliberately does not do
No Black-Scholes, no volatility, no option-pricing model. Those need inputs nobody at your stage has, and produce a confident number from a guess. This shows intrinsic value only, which is arithmetic you can check.
No exit probability. The shell this page replaced promised one. Any figure would be invented; most grants are worth nothing because there is no exit, and no calculator can tell you the odds for yours.
No tax modelling. Treatment differs by country, by instrument (ISO, NSO, RSU, ESOP), by when you exercise and by how long you hold. Some jurisdictions tax at exercise on paper gains you cannot sell — which is how people end up owing money on shares they never converted to cash.
Liquidation preferences are not modelled and often matter most. If investors hold preferred stock with a preference stack above your common shares, a sale can clear the preference and leave common holders with little or nothing, whatever the headline price.
The price you enter is not a market price. A last-round or 409A valuation is a point-in-time figure for a security you usually cannot sell.
Sources
None. No valuation, share price, tax rate or dilution figure is embedded or fetched — every input is one you were given or assumed. For what your grant actually means, read your option agreement and the company’s cap table disclosure, and take advice on the tax treatment where you live.