When Jyoti Bansal made "the hardest decision" of his career — selling his software startup AppDynamics for billions — he did it with his employees in mind. As the startup's founder and chairman, Bansal would've become wealthy either way — but only one of his two options guaranteed the same for many of his staffers, he says. Upon Bansal's acceptance of the offer, roughly 400 AppDynamics employees saw their shares of the company rise in value to at least $1 million, a spokesperson for Bansal says. Today, he's the CEO and co-founder of two other software startups, Traceable and Harness, the latter of which was most recently valued at $3.7 billion in 2022. At least 70 of the company's 80 employees became millionaires on paper when VeriSign's stock soared two years later, Chaudhry said.

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