Hi HN, longtime lurker.<p>I was fortunate enough to join a startup 2.5 years ago that has done quite well in that time (roughly 15x the number of employees now, 20x valuation). While I'm certainly not looking to leave, I've done the math and realized there's no way I can afford to exercise my options. I think it'd be ~400k at this point to exercise, including some early-exercising.<p>The way I see it, there are 3 options.<p>1. Try to convince the cofounders to give me a longer post-termination exercise window<p>2. Ignore the problem until I want to leave, or there's a liquidity event<p>3. Try to arrange a loan using a platform like Quid.<p>I'm curious if others on HN have faced this, and what they ended up choosing. And if you were successful in extending your exercise window, how did you manage that?<p>First time posting, so hopefully I did this right. Cheers.