Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

If a startup can always issue new shares, what value is there to stocks/options?
It's called "dilution". Usually it is done to attract more investors, and yes - the existing share holders will get diluted and their share of ownership shrinks. As a shareholder you can affect the board decisions (depends on your stake of ownership), but usually you'll want to attract more investors to keep the company running, so not much you can do to avoid it. The initial investors/employees in a startup company are almost always diluted out. Look at what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple, as an example.