Pros
I was a member of Zenyum's senior management team for five years, reporting directly to the CEO. Here's a short snippet of my experience.
The Good:
Credit where it's due. Zenyum was a place where you could grow, especially in the earlier years. The pace was fast, the problems were real, and if you were hungry there was no shortage of opportunities to stretch. I built skills, took on more than my job description, and made some lifelong friends. For the average employee looking to learn fast, the first couple of years could be genuinely worth it. After that, the learning curve plateaus and you're basically just running on the hamster wheel with a lost management team at times. Blind leading the blind. IYKYK.
Cons
The Bad:
Like most startups, salary was below market rate or at market rate at best. The sweet kicker was always the promise of a future payout through employee shares (ESOP). I was sold this dream when I joined, and it got reinforced at every quarterly OKR and every bonus season. In five years I received one salary raise and never a cash bonus, only more ESOP. And this wasn't just my experience, it was the playbook I was taught to use when hiring my own teams and managing bonus season. I drank the kool-aid for years and helped serve it to others. That part is on me, I own it.
The Betrayal:
After five years I chose to take my own path. Several other senior leaders also left around the same period. I left on good terms.
Over a year after my departure, on the evening of December 23, 2025, two days before Christmas (and yes, I believe the timing was intentional), Zenyum's legal team sends out an email to all ESOP holders stating that a corporate transaction was completed and all shares in the company were acquired. On paper, a successful exit. Here's the kicker: all employee stock options were cancelled and the payout was zero. I confirmed with multiple former senior colleagues and to my knowledge, this applied to every employee who previously worked there.
Fast forward to February 2026, the deal gets announced publicly as a "merger of equals" with MakeO Toothsi. The CEO keeps his role. The company lives on. But every former employee who was promised shares for years of below-market work? Not a cent. This is a company backed by Sequoia and L Catterton. Dozens of former employees were cut out entirely. That was a conscious choice.
For me personally, it was a matter of principle more than the money. Even if the fair proportional payout was $1, because that's what every employee deserved, I would have been fine.
Why am I sharing this?
This is a lesson I wish someone had shared with me before I joined. Startups will try to compensate with ESOP upside, and the contracts are structured so the company holds all the cards. Even if you do your due diligence and get a lawyer to review the terms, what happened to us proved there is no real protection. Make your career decisions based on cash compensation and growth, not on the dream of a future payout that may never come.
I don't regret the experience. I grew, I learned, and I made real friendships. But the two year mark was probably good enough. I wish I didn't give five years of my career and commitment only to walk away with nothing when the company finally got its exit.