Salary vs ESOP?

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Hello readers,

Does this sound familiar? A startup employee cashed out their shares in the company and became an overnight millionaire.

But while tech companies are known for including stock options in salary packages, not everyone gets the same fairytale ending.

In reality, many founders and employees in Indonesia are still figuring out how employee stock option plans work. Find out more in this article or scroll down for a short summary.

But first, your quick bytes for today:

1️⃣ After taking a quick personal break, Ajey Gore, the former CTO of Gojek, is back — not at the ride-hailing startup but at Sequoia Capital India, with the title of operating partner of technology.

2️⃣ “If only we can invest as much as we spend…” Good news: Grab heard you. The Southeast Asian giant’s fintech arm has launched its first micro-investment solution AutoInvest along with other products, including consumer loans through a third-party platform.

3️⃣ In continuation of the “Microsoft is maybe buying TikTok” story, we’re finally hearing from China, and the middle kingdom is not happy about it, saying that they have “plenty of ways to respond if the [US] administration carries out its planned smash and grab.”

4️⃣ Want to get on board Ant Group’s upcoming stock sale that could surpass oil giant Saudi Aramco’s US$29.4 billion IPO? Then you better not be working with its rivals, as advised by senior executives at Alibaba, which owns a third of the Ant Group.

5️⃣ China’s ride-hailing giant DiDi Chuxing is preparing to expand to Russia, but experts are saying it’s not going to be easy — Uber had tried and failed in 2017.

6️⃣ While Indian drivers have been seeing a decline in ride-hailing demand on Uber and Ola, they have also spotted another opportunity: Listing their vehicles on online travel aggregators such as Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, and Meru, because there is still a demand for intercity rides.

Would you like some stock options on top of your salary?

To tech workers, cashing out their employee stock option plan (ESOP) sounds like a dream. But for many in Indonesia, they’re scratching their heads trying to understand how ESOP works.

Do you use QuickBooks for accounting? Well, it’s about to get fancier.