For Alan, there was certainly an upside for the company in terms of issuing stock options to employees. When asked if equity holding made a difference in his attitude and loyalty to the company, he replied:

Yeah, absolutely. Even looking at the start-up, not everyone was a shareholder. And especially when the company doesn’t look like it’s going to take off, then you realize your options are not going to be worth anything so it’s hard to be motivated. Yeah, absolutely. At [the larger satellite company], we had shares . . . , but it wasn’t like they were going to take off or something based on something we did. Whereas, with [the Internet start-up] the things that you did could affect the company and could affect the value of your holdings. So it gives you a sense of power. More of a sense of worth. For working at [the defense contractor] I guess there is a patriotic aspect. But working for them in Silicon Valley with all these millionaires sprouting up, it’s a little hard to justify working in a place like that. Even though, you know, if you stay there you can retire at age fifty-eight and play golf the rest of your life. That’s what my dad did. He worked for [an oil company] for thirty-five years, and he plays a lot of golf but his golf game still stinks.