valuation.vc Startup Stock Option
Value Calculator
Public Company Stock
Option Value Calculator

Public company option value calculator

Have you ever wondered about the value of the employee stock options or RSUs that you own? This free calculator will tell you that value using a few simple inputs. It works for ANY publicly traded company in the U.S. and is updated daily.

Why isn’t looking at current trading prices enough? If you have options, they are likely different in maturity and exercise (strike) price than those traded publicly. If you have RSUs that you can’t sell right now, you may want to look at the estimated distribution of your payoffs when you finally are able to sell shares.

This calculator was developed by Will Gornall at UBC and Ilya Strebulaev at Stanford University. This is a beta version, please come back soon to see an updated version. We welcome your feedback. By accessing or using the site, you are accepting our terms of use.


Model inputs

Enter your company name or stock ticker below and and click "Load data" and we will value your shares or options using Finnhub data.

Your ownership form

Number of shares or options you own

Option exercise price (strike price)

dollars

Option expiration

years

Company



Model outputs


Other considerations

This calculator values shares and options from the perspective of a diversified investor. The value of these shares or options to YOU may be substantially lower.

Can you tolerate risk?

Shares and options are risky, as illustrated by the dice roll example above. The more money you have and the more secure your job is, the better you are able to deal with that risk. Beyond that, some people are more worried about risk than others.

The less you are able to deal with risk, the less your shares or options are worth to you.

Are you impatient?

If you have high interest debt or need to buy a house, you may prioritize money today. That reduces the value of payoffs that will come years from now.

The more you need money today or in a few years, the less your shares or options are worth (unless you can sell them immediately).

Will you quit?

If you leave a company, you lose your unvested ownership. Vested ownership may also lose value as you may have to exercise options (creating tax and cash-flow issues) or be forced to sell them to the company.

The more likely you are to leave the company early, the less your shares or options are worth.

What is your tax situation?

Receiving, exercising, or selling stock options or shares can create complicated tax situations. You should consult with a tax advisor in order to avoid an unwanted tax surprise. Your tax bill may end up being between 15% to 50% of the proceeds.

Plan for taxes and talk to a tax advisor.


How does it work?

Step 1: We pull financial information on the company you entered from Finnhub.

Step 2: We calculate the volatility of that company using the share price data.

Step 3: We use that information and the Monte Carlo method (similar to Black-Scholes model) to calculate the value of the options and the distribution of their payoffs.


About the authors

Will Gornall

WILL GORNALL
Assistant Professor of Finance, University of British Columbia
will.gornall@sauder.ubc.ca 
willgornall.com
Will Gornall is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of British Columbia. He is an expert on venture capital and innovation financing.



Ilya A. Strebulaev

ILYA A. STREBULAEV
The David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
istrebulaev@stanford.edu 
https://ilyas1.people.stanford.edu/
Ilya A. Strebulaev is the David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity and Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an expert in corporate finance, venture capital, innovation financing, and financial decision-making. He is the faculty director of the Stanford GSB Venture Capital Initiative.


Our venture capital papers

Squaring Venture Capital Valuations with Reality. Journal of Financial Economics, Forthcoming

We develop a valuation model for venture capital--backed companies and apply it to 135 US unicorns, that is, private companies with reported valuations above $1 billion. We value unicorns using financial terms from legal filings and find that reported unicorn post--money valuations average 48% above fair value, with 14 being more than 100% above. Reported valuations assume that all shares are as valuable as the most recently issued preferred shares. We calculate values for each share class, which yields lower valuations because most unicorns gave recent investors major protections such as initial public offering (IPO) return guarantees (15%), vetoes over down-IPOs (24%), or seniority to all other investors (30%). Common shares lack all such protections and are 56% overvalued. After adjusting for these valuation-inflating terms, almost one-half (65 out of 135) of unicorns lose their unicorn status.

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions? Journal of Financial Economics, Forthcoming (with Paul A. Gompers and Steven N. Kaplan)

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing; investment decisions; valuation; deal structure; post-investment value-added; exits; internal organization of firms; and relationships with limited partners. In selecting investments, VCs see the management team as more important than business related characteristics such as product or technology. They also attribute more of the likelihood of ultimate investment success or failure to the team than to the business. While deal sourcing, deal selection, and post-investment value-added all contribute to value creation, the VCs rate deal selection as the most important of the three. We also explore (and find) differences in practices across industry, stage, geography and past success. We compare our results to those for CFOs (Graham and Harvey 2001) and private equity investors (Gompers, Kaplan and Mukharlyamov forthcoming).

Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalists and Angels

We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship using a tightly controlled randomized field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with a randomly selected gender (male or female) and race (Asian or White). Female entrepreneurs received a 9% higher rate of interested replies than male entrepreneurs pitching identical projects and Asian entrepreneurs received a 6% higher rate than their White counterparts. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails.



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