I can’t sell equity in a private company to exchange for goods and services like I can stock that gets deposited in my brokerage account every six months.
=GOOGLEFINANCE("AMZN", "price")* (number of shares).
I can log into Fidelity and sell my shares during hours when the market is open and not at a discount.
What type of market do you think there was to buy my options in the 60 person startup that no one ever heard of at my previous company? I was paid in cash at market value so it wasn’t a big deal - and “market” for your standard enterprise CRUD developer architect was nothing to write home about compared to tech company salaries.
This is incorrect. There is often significant unmet demand for private successful companies. Employees can often sell at close to what investors end up paying for it.