I agree that losing the right to exercised options in a highly public, billion dollar deal is odd. However, the end result is that guy has no stock or money. This is the same result of the "variety of games to screw common shareholders" which you seem to agree is standard tech practice. I guess there's a difference in the mechanism, but the result is the same for the guy getting screwed. Unfortunately, I cannot cite "real" statistics so feel free to write this off as internet hearsay. I should qualify that I made the mistake of spending too much time working in Boston where everyone secretly wants to be Thurston Howell III, not Steve Jobs or Larry Page. Thus, my experience is not really "the Valley" but then again neither was Skype's.