How do you set up the valuation of the company re:option agreements with employees/advisers to get exercise price per share?

A SAFE cap is not really a valuation, to get that you need to do a 409A. You want to get the assessor to give you a low valuation for your current state to minimize the option price. This is unrelated to your current cap.

You can give advisors options at the founder price.....$0.00001 or some such number. We do this so that the advisor doesn't actually have to pay us to buy options. This does not involve reducing the Valuation Cap of your company.

Does anybody have an opinion about giving advisors `Options to purchase Common Stock` vs `Restricted Common Stock` (before a priced round)? We know that both has tax implications ultimately, but is there any recommendation on what option is smoother?

How should I fire an employee that has been with the company for a long time?

For a cash strapped company, is there guidance on how the founder should price the common, assuming the company is still very early (pre-revenue, 1-3 FTEs, no funding except maybe $60K from Alchemist and others?)

Our current stock option pool is @ 10%, distributed as I see fit. At Seed, it was fully distributed--but now, I want to use 3% for key hires and 7% for myself. However, a board member thinks founder top-up only occurs after Series A. Does this make sense?

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