Where should I look? Just at Rodney still or to one of the cameras? That's the camera? Perfect.

Rapid-fire questions and candid answers to meet the leader behind the title.

I'm Atish Dabda, one of the co-founders and CEO of Equity Zen.

You know, one piece of advice that I... heard, but it took me a long time for it to sink in is to trust my gut.

It turns out you know what you're doing a lot more than you think.

Is it harder to manage an employee that has no equity or someone who's a millionaire on paper? You know, managing folks is hard no matter what.

I would say someone who has an ownership stake is always a little bit easier to manage than someone who doesn't.

At the end of the day, my ask of them is not just transactional.

So what have you seen some misalignments where the CEO felt that employees have this perspective around equity compensation or even selling their equity, and employees felt totally different?

Yeah.

Well, uh, look, that's a great question, and the, the fundamental difference is when you're the founder or CEO of a company, especially a private company, which means that you're, you know, you're, you're not quite in the public yet, public markets yet, you haven't graduated, if you will, you're still proving yourself.

There's this natural instinct to say, uh, you know, "It's us against the world.

You're either with me or you're against me," and that's not...

You know, as companies mature, that's not really true.

That may, may have been true when you're, you know, a guy and a gal and a dog in a coffee shop with a, with your pitch deck, but as companies mature, as you actually have a, a meaningful f- workforce, it's not really fair to have your entire workfo- force wait until the company exits for them to move forward in their lives.

What are some of the things that employees misunderstand or don't know when it comes to private market equity?