Option Pools (VSOP) in Europe: Attracting Talent with Equity. Designing templates for advisor agreements and employee stock options.21 | Ultimate Guide For Startups

TL;DR: Option Pools (VSOP) in Europe: Attracting Talent with Equity. Designing templates for advisor agreements and employee stock options.21

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Option Pools (VSOP) in Europe: Attracting Talent with Equity. Designing templates for advisor agreements and employee stock options.21 shows you how to use equity to hire and keep strong talent in Europe without losing control of your company or creating legal and tax messes.

• Your option pool should match your hiring plan, not startup myths. Most European startups reserve about 5% to 15%, often near 10%, then size grants by role, cash gap, and future fundraising dilution.

• VSOPs, phantom shares, and stock options are not the same as real shares. A VSOP usually gives economic upside without shareholder rights, which can keep your cap table cleaner and make early administration easier.

• Clear vesting, cliff, and leaver rules protect both you and your team. The common setup is four-year vesting with a one-year cliff for employees, while advisors usually get shorter, contribution-linked schedules.

• Your templates need more than legal language. Strong advisor and employee agreements should cover scope, grant size, vesting, exit treatment, confidentiality, IP, termination, and tax warnings in plain English people can understand.

• European equity plans need country-aware drafting. Tax, labor rules, social charges, and cross-border hiring rules differ by country, so copying a US ESOP can create expensive problems. For extra context, see this guide to employee stock options and this overview of advisory shares.

If you want to build a fair, readable, investor-friendly plan, use this guide as your checklist and draft your pool, advisor agreement, and employee grant documents before your next hire.

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When the startup can’t afford senior talent in cash, so it starts handing out VSOPs like “trust us, this spreadsheet is your yacht.” Unsplash

Option Pools (VSOP) in Europe: Attracting Talent with Equity. Designing templates for advisor agreements and employee stock options.21 starts with a simple truth: many European startups cannot outpay big employers in cash, so they compete with upside. In Europe, that upside often comes through VSOPs, employee stock option plans, phantom shares, warrants, and country-specific equity-like rights that promise future value without giving away the company blindly on day one.

A VSOP, short for Virtual Stock Option Plan, is a contractual right that mimics the economics of shares without always transferring actual shares at grant. For startups, this matters because it helps hire senior people, retain early team members, preserve runway, and create a culture where people think like owners instead of short-term employees.

Why does this matter now? Because Europe is fighting hard for startup talent. Balderton Capital’s Built in Europe talent push reflects a wider reality: startups across the continent need stronger hiring tools if they want engineers, operators, and commercial leads to stay in Europe and join younger companies instead of defaulting to US giants or safer local employers.

From my perspective as Violetta Bonenkamp, a bootstrapping founder who has scaled teams across countries, equity is never just compensation. It is behavior design. If your plan is vague, unfair, or impossible to explain, it will not create ownership. It will create suspicion. And if founders treat options as a last-minute legal document instead of a deliberate system, they usually end up with bad hiring, messy dilution, and ugly conversations during due diligence.

By the end of this guide, you will understand how option pools and VSOPs work in Europe, how to size them, how vesting should interact with real company risk, how to draft advisor and employee templates, and how to avoid the mistakes that make investors, hires, and lawyers nervous. If you need a wider foundation first, read this practical guide on equity and stock options before building your pool.

Why do option pools and VSOPs matter so much for European startups right now?

The challenge is brutal and very concrete. Startups need people who can ship product, open markets, handle compliance, build sales, and survive uncertainty. Yet early-stage companies usually have less cash, less brand safety, and more hiring friction than established employers. Equity bridges that gap, but only if the promise feels real.

Europe has another layer of friction. Each country has its own tax treatment, labor rules, securities rules, social contributions, and market habits. A French hire, a Dutch contractor, and a German employee may all need different paperwork and different explanations. So founders who copy a US option plan from the internet often create confusion or even tax damage.

There is also a wider market signal. The shift toward equity-heavy compensation models in professional services shows that ownership alignment is moving well beyond classic venture-backed startups. People want participation in value creation, not just salary and vague promises about “future rewards.”

Cash is scarce at seed and pre-seed stage, so equity helps stretch runway.
Talent is selective, and the best people ask harder questions about strike price, vesting, liquidity, and tax.
Investors expect discipline, because a messy cap table or a badly structured pool can slow fundraising.
Cross-border hiring is common, which makes local legal and tax review mandatory.
Culture matters, and shared upside can turn a fragile team into a team that stays through difficult months.

Here is why founders get this wrong. They think the option pool is a spreadsheet exercise. It is not. It is part legal architecture, part financial planning, part hiring psychology, and part trust infrastructure. In my own work, whether in deeptech or startup education, I keep coming back to one principle: if people cannot understand the rules of the game, they stop playing hard.

What exactly is a VSOP, and how is it different from real shares or stock options?

Let’s break it down. In Europe, founders often use the term option pool loosely, but there are several different instruments behind it.

Employee Stock Option Plan, or ESOP: gives the right to buy actual shares later, usually after vesting and subject to exercise terms.
VSOP: a contractual claim linked to the company’s value, often paid out in cash or cash-equivalent value at an exit or liquidity event.
Phantom shares: very close to VSOP logic, where the holder benefits as if they owned shares, but without being a legal shareholder.
Warrants: rights to subscribe for shares under specific legal conditions.
Restricted shares or direct equity grants: actual shares granted upfront or over time, often with reverse vesting or repurchase rights.

A real share usually gives legal shareholder rights, such as voting, dividend participation, and access to some information. A VSOP usually does not. It gives economic participation according to contract terms. That distinction matters a lot. Founders often prefer VSOPs because they keep the cap table cleaner and avoid adding many small shareholders too early.

Employees may prefer real equity if they care about formal ownership, but real shares can create admin burden, tax issues, and investor resistance. So the right answer depends on your country, stage, investor expectations, and who you are trying to hire.

If your startup still has unresolved co-founder ownership questions, do not touch employee options before fixing the base structure. Start with a strong founders’ agreement, because a broken founder setup poisons every later grant.

Core concept 1: The option pool itself

The option pool is the percentage of company ownership reserved for future grants to employees, advisors, consultants, and sometimes board members. It is usually expressed on a fully diluted basis, meaning it assumes all convertible rights and options are counted.

Why it matters for startups: investors care because pool size affects dilution, hiring plans, and post-round ownership. Founders care because too small a pool forces painful top-ups later, while too large a pool dilutes them before they even know who they need.

Core concept 2: Vesting

Vesting means the recipient earns the right over time, usually across four years with a one-year cliff. This protects the company from giving away too much to people who leave early or never really contribute.

Why it matters for startups: without vesting, you create dead equity. That is one of the ugliest startup diseases in Europe. A person leaves after six months, keeps a big stake, and blocks morale, future grants, and investor confidence. If you want the local detail, read this guide on vesting schedules in Europe.

Core concept 3: Exercise, liquidity, and taxation

Exercise is when a holder turns an option into shares, if the plan uses actual options. Liquidity means the event that lets the holder get money, such as an acquisition, secondary sale, or IPO. Tax treatment decides whether the benefit is taxed as salary, capital gain, or something in between.

Why it matters for startups: people do not value equity the same way once they understand tax. A “0.5% option grant” sounds sexy in a job offer. Its real worth depends on strike price, dilution, leaver rules, exit timing, and local tax treatment. Good founders explain the mechanics. Bad founders sell dreams with no math.

How big should a startup option pool be in Europe?

There is no magic number, but there is a practical range. Most venture-backed startups reserve somewhere around 5% to 15% for an employee option pool, with many seed-stage companies landing around 10%. Bootstrapped companies may start lower and expand later. Heavily technical startups that need expensive senior hires may need more.

The right size depends on five factors:

Hiring plan for the next 12 to 24 months
Seniority of planned hires
Cash compensation gap versus market
Expected advisor participation
Investor round timing and dilution tolerance

Here is a simple planning model I like because it forces realism:

List the roles you expect to hire in the next 18 months.
Assign a target grant range to each role.
Add a buffer for unplanned but likely hires.
Add a small advisor reserve.
Stress-test dilution after the next financing round.

A sample early-stage range might look like this:

Senior engineering lead: 0.5% to 2%
First product lead: 0.3% to 1.25%
First sales or growth lead: 0.25% to 1%
Mid-level early employee: 0.05% to 0.3%
Advisor: 0.1% to 0.5%, often much lower unless they are truly active

These are not legal rules. They are directional market logic. Stage, geography, traction, and bargaining power change the answer. A founder who gives 1% to every “strategic advisor” usually learns the lesson later, during due diligence, when investors ask why the company rewarded coffee chats like core execution.

How do you build a European VSOP or option pool step by step?

Next steps. Treat this as a 12-week founder process, not a one-evening document task.

Phase 1: Assessment and planning

Audit your current cap table and any promises already made verbally or by email.
Check your legal entity type and whether actual options, warrants, or virtual rights fit best.
Review local tax rules with startup-aware counsel in each country where grant holders live.
Decide who is eligible: employees only, or also advisors, consultants, and contractors.
Build a hiring forecast for 12 to 24 months.
Choose a target pool size and reserve policy.

If you work with freelancers and consultants, pause and classify them properly before giving equity-like rights. Misclassification can turn a smart grant into a labor and tax headache. This guide on contractor vs employee classification helps founders sort that out early.

Phase 2: Legal framework and economics

Choose the instrument: VSOP, phantom shares, EMI-style equivalent if your country allows, warrants, or direct options.
Set vesting terms, cliff, acceleration rules, and leaver rules.
Define what happens on exit, change of control, termination, disability, death, or misconduct.
Set valuation logic and, where relevant, strike price or reference value.
Approve the pool through the right corporate process, such as board and shareholder resolutions.
Create grant templates and approval workflows.

Phase 3: Communication and rollout

Prepare a plain-language explainer for recipients.
Run one-to-one conversations, especially with senior hires.
Record every grant formally and store it in one clean data room.
Update the cap table and fully diluted ownership view after each grant.
Review pool usage every quarter.

This last part is where many founders fail. They think the signed document is enough. It is not. People need translation. As someone with a background in linguistics and behavior design, I can tell you that ambiguous wording destroys trust faster than a smaller but clear grant. Founders should explain what the grant means, what it does not mean, when it might pay out, and what can cause loss of rights.

What should a strong advisor agreement template include?

Advisors are where startup generosity often goes to die. Founders hand out equity to people with shiny LinkedIn profiles, famous logos, or impressive conference talks. Six months later, the advisor has made two intros, missed three calls, and still holds economic rights. That is avoidable.

A strong advisor equity agreement should be brutally clear. Advisors are not co-founders. They are not employees. They should earn upside based on defined contribution, time, and measurable access.

Parties and capacity: legal names, role, and confirmation that the advisor acts as an independent contractor unless local law says otherwise.
Scope of services: specific support areas such as fundraising intros, hiring support, regulatory input, product feedback, or market access.
Time commitment: expected hours or meetings per month.
Compensation: cash, equity, or mixed.
Equity instrument: VSOP, phantom shares, options, or another right.
Grant size: fixed amount, percentage, or tranche-based schedule.
Vesting: usually monthly over 12 to 24 months, often without a full one-year cliff for true advisors.
Milestone gates: grants tied to actions such as signed customers, investor meetings, key hires, or regulatory deliverables.
Confidentiality: non-disclosure obligations.
IP assignment: all outputs created for the company belong to the company.
Conflict of interest clause: bans or limits work with direct competitors.
Termination: when and how the relationship can end.
Bad leaver treatment: fraud, misconduct, breach of confidentiality, or serious non-performance should stop vesting and may cancel unvested rights.
Governing law and dispute forum: choose the right country and court or arbitration method.

A practical founder rule: do not grant advisor equity upfront in full. Tie it to time and useful actions. If an advisor promises access to customers or investors, define what counts. Intro email? Meeting? Qualified conversation? Signed term sheet? Signed contract? If you do not define the game, you reward theater.

Sample advisor grant logic

Light-touch advisor: 0.05% to 0.15% over 12 months
Active domain expert: 0.1% to 0.25% over 18 months
High-impact advisor with regular work and measurable introductions: 0.25% to 0.5% in rare cases

If someone asks for 1% as an advisor in a young startup, that request should trigger very hard questions. Sometimes the answer is yes, but only if they are operating almost like a part-time executive with very clear value creation.

What should an employee stock option or VSOP template include?

The employee grant package usually has two layers: the plan rules that apply to everyone, and the individual grant letter or agreement that sets the employee-specific terms. Keep both consistent and readable.

Plan-level clauses

Purpose of the plan
Definitions of terms such as shares, virtual shares, exit event, fair market value, vesting commencement date, good leaver, bad leaver
Eligibility rules
Pool size and plan administration rules
Board or shareholder approval process for grants
Transfer restrictions
Tax withholding language
Treatment in mergers, asset sales, liquidation, or IPO
Plan amendment and termination mechanics

Grant-level clauses

Recipient name and role
Grant date
Number of options or virtual units
Percentage reference, if stated, plus dilution disclaimer
Vesting start date
Cliff and monthly or quarterly vesting schedule
Exercise price, if relevant
Exercise window after termination, if applicable
Good leaver and bad leaver treatment
Acceleration on change of control, if any
Signatures and acceptance

Also connect the grant to the employment agreement. If your employment contracts are weak or inconsistent across countries, fix that first. This guide on employment law basics in Europe is a smart precursor for founders hiring across borders.

A plain-language grant explainer you should always include

Most startups need a one-page non-legal summary that says:

What the recipient is getting
When it vests
What happens if they leave
What may happen on an exit
That tax may apply and they should seek advice
That this is not guaranteed cash and may end up worth zero

This is not legal fluff. It is trust hygiene. The best teams I have seen stay calmer during hard periods because the ownership rules were explained early and repeated often.

Which vesting, cliff, and leaver rules usually work best?

The default market setup for employees is still four-year vesting with a one-year cliff. After the cliff, vesting usually continues monthly. For advisors, one to two years with monthly vesting is more common, often with no long cliff.

But default is not always correct. A startup should adapt the schedule to actual risk and role value.

Founding team or near-founder early hires: four years can make sense, sometimes with reverse vesting if shares are granted upfront.
Senior hires joining after traction: still often four years, but grant size may be smaller because company risk is lower.
Part-time experts: shorter vesting and milestone tranches can fit better.
Advisors: monthly vesting tied to active contribution avoids dead allocations.

Leaver rules need extra care. At minimum, define:

Good leaver: someone who leaves due to redundancy, illness, mutual agreement, death, or other acceptable reasons.
Bad leaver: someone dismissed for cause, fraud, gross misconduct, or serious breach.
Treatment of vested rights: kept, partially kept, or repurchased.
Treatment of unvested rights: almost always lapse immediately.
Exercise period: especially important for actual options.

A lot of founder pain comes from soft drafting here. They avoid difficult words because they want to look nice during hiring. Then someone leaves and every sentence gets tested under stress. Write for the breakup, not for the honeymoon.

What are the biggest legal and tax issues in Europe?

Europe does not have one startup equity regime. It has many. And each country can treat virtual rights, options, and direct equity differently. So use this section as a map, not as legal advice.

Tax timing: tax may hit on grant, vesting, exercise, payout, or sale, depending on the instrument and country.
Employment status: employee grants and contractor grants can be taxed differently.
Social security: some benefits may trigger payroll-like contributions.
Securities and corporate rules: direct share issuance may need formal approvals and filings.
Cross-border mobility: if an employee moves countries while vesting, tax apportionment gets messy fast.
Works councils or labor protections: in some countries, compensation changes can interact with labor law more than founders expect.

Founders should also watch the cultural issue. Many European hires are less familiar with startup equity than US hires. They may discount it heavily unless you show scenarios clearly. So communication is not marketing. It is part of the economic design.

My own bias as a European founder is simple: protection and compliance should be invisible in the workflow. Do not expect hires to become mini-lawyers. Build a process where the plan documents, grant letters, tax warnings, cap table records, and approval logs are all organized before the first grant goes out.

What mistakes do founders make with option pools and VSOPs?

This is where the real damage happens. Most option plan failures do not come from one giant legal disaster. They come from small lazy choices repeated over time.

Mistake 1: Creating the pool with no hiring model

Why founders do it: investors mention a standard pool size, so founders pick a round number and move on.

The impact: too much founder dilution or too little reserve for actual future hires.

Build the pool from expected roles, not folklore.
Review it against your next financing plan.
Revisit every quarter, not every panic round.

Mistake 2: Copying a US template into a European company

Why founders do it: speed, cost fear, and startup Twitter myths.

The impact: tax surprises, invalid mechanics, or documents that clash with local labor law.

Use country-aware counsel.
Check whether VSOP or phantom structures fit better than direct options.
Translate the economics for each recipient jurisdiction.

Mistake 3: Giving too much to advisors

Why founders do it: insecurity and borrowed credibility.

The impact: dead equity, weak contribution, bad investor questions later.

Use milestone-linked vesting.
Start smaller than feels emotionally comfortable.
Review actual contribution after three to six months.

Mistake 4: Not explaining dilution and payout logic

Why founders do it: they fear scaring candidates.

The impact: people mentally price the grant wrong and feel cheated later.

Show simple cap table scenarios.
Explain that future funding rounds dilute everyone.
State clearly that options may never become liquid.

Mistake 5: Weak documentation and no audit trail

Why founders do it: early chaos, no admin support, too many parallel priorities.

The impact: painful diligence, grant disputes, missing approvals, and trust erosion.

Store board approvals, signed grants, cap table updates, and plan rules in one data room.
Track vested and unvested positions monthly.
Assign one owner internally.

How should you measure whether your option pool strategy is actually working?

Founders often measure equity by how much they gave away. Wrong metric. Measure whether the plan helps you hire, retain, and focus the right people.

Foundational metrics

Offer acceptance rate for roles that include equity
Time to hire for senior and specialist roles
12-month retention of grant holders
Pool usage rate versus hiring plan
Fully diluted founder ownership after each financing event

Advanced metrics after a few quarters

Grant concentration by team and seniority
Percent of grants tied to measurable performance or milestones
Employee understanding score from internal surveys
Advisor output per granted basis point
Retention of top quartile performers with grants versus without grants

One metric I personally love is brutally simple: ask recipients to explain their grant back to you in plain language. If they cannot, your plan communication failed. As a founder, I care less about pretty documentation and more about whether the system changes behavior in the real world.

How should option pool strategy change by startup stage?

Pre-seed and seed stage

Your reality: low cash, high uncertainty, hiring risk, and heavy founder dependence.

Use equity more aggressively for mission-critical early hires.
Keep the plan simple enough to explain in one meeting.
Reserve enough room for future engineering and product talent.
Be conservative with advisors.

Success looks like: you hire your first serious non-founder operators without wrecking founder ownership.

Series A stage

Your reality: team grows fast, processes matter more, and candidate scrutiny rises.

Formalize plan administration.
Benchmark grants by role, market, and level.
Prepare better grant explainers and manager training.
Review whether the pool needs a top-up before the next round.

Success looks like: predictable hiring packages, fewer negotiation surprises, and cleaner diligence.

Series B and later

Your reality: more countries, more legal entities, more admin, more expectation of fairness.

Segment grants by geography and level with clear policy bands.
Run annual refresh grants for top performers where justified.
Upgrade tax and legal support for mobile employees.
Prepare for secondary liquidity questions from longer-serving staff.

Success looks like: a mature ownership culture with no cap table chaos.

What does a practical 4-week founder action plan look like?

Week 1: Research and alignment

Review current cap table and any informal promises.
List planned hires and likely advisors for the next 18 months.
Choose the countries you must cover immediately.
Set your hiring philosophy: cash-heavy, equity-heavy, or mixed.

Week 2: Legal and economic design

Speak to startup-aware legal and tax counsel.
Choose VSOP, phantom shares, or direct options where suitable.
Draft vesting, leaver, acceleration, and exit rules.
Model dilution under at least two future financing scenarios.

Week 3: Documentation

Create the plan rules.
Create employee grant template.
Create advisor agreement template.
Create plain-language explainer and FAQ.
Prepare board and shareholder approval documents.

Week 4 and after: Rollout and review

Issue the first grants carefully.
Hold one-to-one explanation sessions.
Store every signed document properly.
Review pool usage and recipient understanding after the first month.

Glossary: what do these option pool and VSOP terms mean?

Option pool: the reserved percentage of company ownership set aside for future grants.

VSOP: a virtual stock option plan, usually giving economic upside linked to share value without making the holder a legal shareholder at grant.

Phantom share: a contractual right that mirrors the financial value of a share.

Vesting: the process through which a recipient earns rights over time.

Cliff: the minimum initial period before any rights vest.

Exercise price: the amount payable to buy shares under an option, where relevant.

Good leaver: a departing participant treated leniently under the plan, usually allowed to keep some vested rights.

Bad leaver: a departing participant whose conduct causes harsher treatment, often losing unvested rights and sometimes more.

Fully diluted basis: a cap table view that assumes all convertible rights, options, and similar instruments are counted.

Change of control: an acquisition or similar event where company ownership shifts materially.

What are the main takeaways for founders building option pools in Europe?

VSOPs and option pools are hiring infrastructure, not decorative legal paperwork.
Europe needs country-aware drafting, because tax and labor treatment differ widely.
The right pool size comes from your hiring plan, not startup folklore.
Advisor grants should be smaller and more conditional than many founders first assume.
Clear communication matters as much as legal drafting, because misunderstood equity creates resentment instead of ownership.

My final founder take is direct. Equity works when it changes behavior, keeps the right people in the game, and survives stress. It fails when it is handed out from insecurity, copied from foreign templates, or explained like a magic lottery ticket. Build your plan like you plan to be audited, challenged, and remembered for fairness. That is how you attract serious talent in Europe without giving away your company by accident.

FAQ

How should founders explain VSOPs to candidates without overselling them?

Keep the explanation concrete: what is granted, when it vests, what triggers payout, what happens on departure, and why dilution matters. The best startup equity communication in Europe uses simple scenarios, not hype. Candidates trust founders more when the upside is shown with assumptions, risks, and realistic timelines.

When is a VSOP better than granting real shares to employees?

A VSOP is often better when founders want cleaner cap table management, fewer minority shareholder issues, and simpler administration across early hires. It can also suit companies operating in multiple European jurisdictions. The tradeoff is that recipients usually get economics without shareholder rights, which should be explained clearly.

How do you decide whether advisors should get equity, cash, or both?

Use equity only when the advisor creates repeatable strategic value that the company cannot easily buy with cash. For one-off introductions or occasional calls, fixed fees are often cleaner. If you combine both, keep equity small, milestone-based, and time-limited so the arrangement stays proportional to real contribution.

What internal process prevents option pool mistakes before they become legal problems?

Set one approval chain for every grant: hiring request, compensation approval, legal review, board signoff, signed grant, cap table update, and document storage. This discipline matters as much as drafting. Founders building across borders can also use the European Startup Playbook for broader operating structure context.

How often should a European startup reprice or refresh equity grants?

Review grants after major valuation changes, promotions, retention risks, or financing rounds, but do not reprice casually. Instead, many startups use refresh grants for top performers. A practical rule is to reassess equity bands every 6 to 12 months and after each round so compensation stays credible.

What should founders check before granting equity to remote international hires?

Check tax residence, employment status, payroll treatment, securities restrictions, and whether the person may move countries during vesting. Cross-border startup equity compensation can become messy fast. If you hire through an EOR or across several entities, align legal, tax, and HR teams before sending any grant documents.

How can startups benchmark equity offers without copying US norms?

Benchmark by stage, role criticality, geography, and cash discount versus market salary, not by viral startup posts. European practices differ materially from Silicon Valley norms, especially on acceleration and broad employee participation. Founders can compare patterns in European ESOP benchmarks before finalizing grant ranges.

What are the warning signs that an advisor agreement template is too weak?

Red flags include vague deliverables, no vesting schedule, no IP assignment, no confidentiality terms, no conflict language, and no termination mechanics. A strong startup advisor equity agreement should define contribution precisely. If the outcome cannot be measured, the grant usually should not exist in the first place.

Should startups include acceleration clauses for employees in Europe?

Yes, but carefully. Single-trigger acceleration can be expensive and investor-unfriendly, while double-trigger acceleration is often easier to justify. Tie acceleration to a real change of control plus termination or material role loss. This keeps employee stock option protection meaningful without making the company harder to finance or acquire.

What does “fair” option pool design actually look like in practice?

Fairness means consistency by role level, clarity on dilution, country-aware treatment, and transparent reasoning for exceptions. It does not mean everyone gets the same percentage. The strongest European startup option pools feel understandable, defensible, and reviewable, so employees see ownership as a system rather than a founder mood.

Violetta Bonenkamp

Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as Mean CEO, is a female entrepreneur and an experienced startup founder, bootstrapping her startups. She has an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 10 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely. Constantly learning new things, like AI, SEO, zero code, code, etc. and scaling her businesses through smart systems.

Option Pools (VSOP) in Europe: Attracting Talent with Equity. Designing templates for advisor agreements and employee stock options.21 | Ultimate Guide For Startups | 2026 EDITION