Is an OTCBB startup reliable to work at? And is there any advantage at having stock options as an employee in that case? Is it normal for a techstartup to go OTCBB?
For a tech startup to get its stock listed over the counter or pink slip trading system is uncommon. Because these markets are poorly covered by analysts and press, and usually thinly traded, they're a far less attractive option for generating liquidity than a public offering on a major exchange, or an acquisition for cash or a larger public company. This can be a dead end, because the company now has a much costlier and more restrictive regulatory burden than it did when private, and it is hard for an OTC company to ever become something else. In my observation, some of the companies that go this way are naive, desperate, or there is something shady involved: either somebody has sold them on something, they are the ones doing the selling, or they are trying to avoid too much oversight for what the company is doing. If you've seen the first 20 minutes of The Wolf of Wall Street, that sums it up.There are a few exceptions, most notably Walmart, which was reportedly OTC from 1970 until graduating in 1972. There are surely plenty of ethical, capable company officers running these microcap companies, but it's just not where a top tier tech company would ever aim to be.Everything else being equal it is usually better to have options than not to have options. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to be worth anything anytime soon, or ever. By the Black-Scholes Model, any options are going to have some non-zero value due to random variation in stock price as well as the effects of inflation, and OTC stocks are particularly volatile. However, by the time it's listed there, a company has probably achieved all of the growth upside it's going to have. A venture funded pre-public company would usually have much better shot at stock appreciation.