I was laid off, so I built a NerdWallet for startup equity liquidity
I was a software engineer at a late stage startup and was caught in a layoff this January. When I looked into exercising my options or getting liquidity, I realized the secondary market is a total black box. Liquidity funds spend a fortune on Google Ads just to find people like us. Those high marketing costs eventually come out of our pockets in the form of higher fees and worse terms. I built StrikeRates to change that. The site is meant to be a central resource for anyone navigating this. I included a Liquidity 101 section that explains the different financial vehicles because that…
I was laid off, so I built a NerdWallet for startup equity liquidity launched on March 16, 2026 with 9 votes, #1,237 of 23,380 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
What it does
Companies used to IPO in 4 years. Now it's 12+. If you hold pre-IPO stock options, you're navigating exercise windows, tax exposure, and financing decisions with no leverage and no transparency. StrikeRates is NerdWallet for stock option financing. Compare 21 providers on fees, structure, and terms. Read reviews from employees who've been through it. Model your exercise scenarios before you talk to anyone. Free. No paywalls. No affiliate deals. Just transparency.
Compare equity financing options side by side and model ISO/NSO exercise scenarios, AMT exposure, and 90-day post-termination windows. Free equity intelligence tools for private market employees.
You spent years building the company. Now, a surprise paperwork freeze and a 90-day window are standing between you and your equity. We compare financing options side by side and surface competing terms, like NerdWallet for equity financing , so you keep leverage and choose on your terms. No commitment. Your entry adds to a collective pool lenders cannot ignore. Nearly 50,000 employees walked away from options they had already earned. The average loss: $47,000 per person. Not because the options were underwater. The 90-day exercise window ran out. Companies used to go public in 5 years. Now it takes 13+. The 90-day exercise deadline never changed. Free. No account needed. Model the…from strikerates.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
I was a software engineer at a late stage startup and was caught in a layoff this January. When I looked into exercising my options or getting liquidity, I realized the secondary market is a total black box. Liquidity funds spend a fortune on Google Ads just to find people like us. Those high marketing costs…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
- LSLive startup leaderboards (a la Hot or Not)2023 · usemassive.com · ▲7
We built this using investor tools. I really wanted to know which startups to work for. Are we on the right track? PS - there's a paywall but if you want to explore more, just DM me your email and I'll give you free access in our db!
- WUWe used investor tools to find the best startups to work at2022 · joinmaasive.com · ▲29
hey y'all -- can you please tell us if our job search tool sucks? :D we built it using an investor platform called Harmonic.ai to gather startup data, then contextualize it so that job seekers could find out about the most exciting startups hiring first (like if they just raised, growing headcount fast, have an ex-unicorn founder, etc). pretty sure we're the first platform doing anything like this. anyway, let me know what you think. really excited to launch this thing soon! getting feedback from the hn community first is really fun :)
FoundersWall2025 · founderswall.com · ▲35I used to be just a blogger. Now I build internet products, still without code, using AI, design, and taste. I was building in public on X for last 2 months. And honestly, I got tired of how it became performative and started to feel fake. I shipped 2 products. Both failed to get any real traction. I kept sneaking into popular builders’ profiles, hoping to learn how they do it. One thing I kept seeing everywhere, product launch directories. I thought here is the scope. So I started building one. Same UI like the rest. Nothing special. Suddenly one day when it was half built, I realized…
I built a tool to show how much ARR you lose to FX feesApr 2026 · fixmyfx.com · ▲5Hey HN, I started my career as a finance manager, transitioned into product management, and now I’m building my own products. Back in my finance days, while managing a £6M budget, I uncovered a £15k leak hiding in plain sight: FX fees. Today, I see solo founders making the exact same mistake. I realised most founders are quietly losing 2-5% of their revenue to what I call the Lazy Tax: - Stripe's ~2% auto-conversion fee on inbound revenue, - plus their local bank's ~3% spread when paying for global SaaS tools (AWS, Claude, Ads). So I built FixMyFX to show founders their exact leak and how to…
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, March 2026
the whole month →
Switch from ChatGPT to Claude with import memory feature
AI · Mar 2026 · claude.com
Littlebird▲709Littlebird remembers everything across your meetings, messages, docs, and apps, then takes action so you can recall any detail and never lose context.
AI · Mar 2026 · littlebird.ai
