[bhl]

It's not a 2 year cliff: it's 6 months before vesting, then 2 years before you can sell.

[ml-anon]

Effective cliff. What use is vested “equity” (ppus aren’t even equity) that you cannot sell?

[beering]

It means that you can keep those shares even if you leave. Otherwise the term vesting cliff would be meaningless at any startup where the shares are not liquid.

[kortilla]

They are yours. That’s a huge difference between a real cliff and illiquid stock.

If you decide you don’t like it, you take what’s vested after the cliff and leave. Even if you have to wait another year and a half to sell, you still got the gain.

[rlt]

Massive difference. You can vest and move on, even if you don’t have liquidity, which most private companies don’t for employees anyway.