In addition to a base salary and the Disco Profit Sharing Scheme, Disco runs an Employee Share Ownership Plan (”ESOP” — also known under the same acronym as an Employee Share Option Plan).

The goal of this program is to provide employees with genuine and meaningful ownership of the company, help align the team for long-term success, and allow Disco to be more competitive in the hiring and retention of employees.

At the time an offer of employment is made to a person, a parallel offer to participate in the ESOP will be made. While the specifics of each offer will vary from person to person depending on their role and seniority, common to all ESOP offers at Disco are:

• Being governed by Disco’s standard ESOP Plan Rules, which accompany each offer;
• Time-based monthly vesting of options over a 36 month period, with a 12 month vesting cliff;
• Extended option exercise window of 24 months for longer-term employees.

ESOP Explainer Session

In early 2022, Gavin ran a short ESOP Explainer Session walking through ESOPs in general and in the context of Disco Labs.

The session was recorded and is available for viewing here, and the slides are available for download here (access is restricted to current Disco employees due to some commercially sensitive information being present).

Further ESOP Resources

The following links may be useful for employees looking to learn more about ESOPs in general:

• The ATO’s information page on concessional employee share schemes (the type of scheme Disco’s ESOP falls under);
• Cake’s ESOP Jargon page clarifies a lot of key ESOP terms in straightforward language. The Cake Equity Blog in general contains a variety of useful information around ESOPs. A lot of the information is targeted towards employers, but there’s plenty of content there that should be useful from an employee perspective.

Cake’s guide to ESOPs. While targeted more towards employers, it provides a pretty decent plain-English explanation of key terms and the motivation behind many aspects of ESOPs in Australia.

Cake’s guide to ESOPs. While targeted more towards employers, it provides a pretty decent plain-English explanation of key terms and the motivation behind many aspects of ESOPs in Australia.