In December 2024, ServiceTitan - the SaaS platform powering trades like HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services - went public in one of the most notable software IPOs of the year. Shares priced at $71 and closed the first day at $101, giving the company an initial market cap of $8.9B.
For the employees who built ServiceTitan, this IPO was more than a headline. It was the moment years of hard work, late nights, and tough decisions turned into tangible value.
This is the story of four former ServiceTitan employees who chose to use Equitybee funding to exercise their stock options ahead of the IPO - and share in the success of the company they helped build.
Like most startup employees, ServiceTitan team members were granted stock options. But to become shareholders, they needed to pay to exercise those options. Between strike price and taxes, this cost often reaches six figures.
The average U.S. employee needs ~$140,000 to exercise and pay taxes on their options
Equitybee data
More than 55% of employees lose their equity leaving their stock options unexercised and expired
For ServiceTitan employees, those costs were real. Without help, they risked walking away from the equity they had worked years to earn.
Between May 2020 and October 2024, Equitybee facilitated funding for four ServiceTitan employees.
This funding allowed them to:
Just a few months after the last offer was funded, ServiceTitan IPO’d - unlocking liquidity.
Employees who used Equitybee were able to exercise their stock options without draining savings or taking on debt. With Equitybee, employees get the funding they need to cover exercise and tax costs - while retaining ownership of their shares.
When employees accept funding, they agree that if - and only if - a liquidity event
(IPO or acquisition) occurs, they will:
If there’s no liquidity event, the employee owes nothing.
Terms vary based on strike price, market conditions, and investor demand. Stronger opportunities (low strike, strong company outlook) often result in more favorable terms.
Each of the 12 Reddit employee offers came with individualized terms - including exercise amount, investor share percentage, and accruing interest - based on:
1 Their option strike price
2 The company share value at time of offer
3 Time horizon until expected exit
This tailored approach ensured every participant had funding terms suited to their situation.
Equitybee has now helped 2,650+ startup employees from 840+ pre-IPO companies - including Reddit, Stripe, SpaceX, Databricks, and ServiceTitan - exercise their stock options and capture their upside. With over $235M facilitated, our mission is simple:
No loans
No out-of-pocket cost
No giving up your equity
Join 2,650+ employees who turned vested options
into real ownership