MC’s benefits are great and at the time were top-tier in Atlanta. They are cash/401k heavy and offer great profit sharing incentives. They also make it abundantly clear that they don’t offer equity and when I negotiated my non-MC offer that I ended up accepting, they were clear that they could not match my equity. They even acknowledged that if I was willing to take a risk with the equity it would likely be the advantageous move to make.
Nonetheless, during my time at MC Ben/Dan repeatedly boasted about turning down offers to sell and repeated they were never intending to go that (or the publicly traded) route. This ultimately factored into my decision to leave, as it never appeared I would have a personal stake in the company. I hope other employees interpreted this in a similar manner and I do believe everyone had abundant opportunities to do so.
In the end and in hindsight, I’m happy with my decision to leave and it did pay out. Nonetheless, I do still believe MC is a great company and despite the founders somewhat selling an incorrect vision, are still acting in good faith. I don’t believe they “withheld equity” as they made it explicitly clear it was never offered, or was ever going to be, but I do see how the boasting of never selling out could be interpreted poorly now in hindsight.
But it's OK. It was very naive to say 'never' and it was a bit naive to take it at face value. As long as they paid their employees well and treated them with respect, and were clear of their prospects, I fail to see who is hurt here ? Except customers being now under the Intuit umbrella, that must hurt...
In the end what changed is that e-mail based marketing was on the decline, with other mediums taking over. There's a point where an industry that stops growing fast eventually consolidates and it tends to get absorbed by groups that has other revenue streams.
Great for us, as we got almost all of their customers.
I recently heard the story of how that happened. The original founders had no intention of selling out, and had signed a deal with the others that unless they were offered a well-defined but ridiculously high price, that the original founders could buy back the shares to take back control.
Well, the multinational company offered the ridiculously high price, and the original founders had no chance to make a higher offer. So they lost "their baby", which is now just a pale shadow of what it once was.
The founders got a lot of money of course, so not a sob story.
It seems like there is a pattern of companies buying other companies and that essentially helps the competitors.
It must be disheartening though, to see something you created get run into the ground.
There's a point where it might make sense for him... even if not for bare personal/lifestyle reasons, a billion could be useful to fund plenty new or existing opensource projects in line with his principles.
I think that's a bias of hindsight, something people say after seeing it happen in a particular situation. In other situations, principles, promises, and other factors have the last word.
Your second point however, “don’t be naive” agree 100%
It happened to me. The CTO of the company I worked for moved to another company and recruited a bunch of us from his previous job. He made tall promises, none of which worked out. We were annoyed at the time, but I now realize he didn't intentionally mislead us - he was just overly optimistic about his abilities and his own faith in the new company he joined. It was a disaster for everyone he recruited from his previous job.
Everybody has a price, everyone has a breaking point.
I have no idea what compensation over there looked like, but I can’t imagine that it was anything less than stellar.
I’ve always been of the impression that equity is what you hand out when you can’t afford to compensate people enough otherwise. If they are paying well, not handing out equity seems like a perfectly normal move.
You had a 'stake' it was just in terms of other kinds of benefits.
If you join a company after it's well-established, then for the most part, unless it's an 'extremely high growth company' - your stock package isn't going to be worth that much, it's just part of comp.
If you joined MC several years after founding, even if they did give you equity, it would be a bit of a nice bonus, and that is all.
Yes doing the exact opposite of what you have always said tends to do that.
Great, it worked out for you. A friend of mine, recently got an offer from a pre-IPO company. He asked for equity, but they are refusing to share any numbers - saying - their lawyers asked them to not do that. Is it normal?
If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. But I think that's incredibly unlikely.
it's an email service provider for campaigns and other email spam with a recognizable brand, let's not imagine that this is beneficial beyond helping companies market stuff to people. It's like a meta-business enhancement service. Happy for the founders, hope they do some good with the new payout - but I think you are giving them a bit too much credit. Sure, kick back 100M to your old school district, maybe another 250M to BLM or to Math for America to strike off all of your philanthropic efforts in one go, curate some plebeian sympathies and smile for the cameras but at the end of the day, making it easy to bombard people with endless email campaigns isn't exactly solving global problems
EDIT: I reject hero worship vigorously - Mailchimp did a thing, it made money, and another entity that did a thing and made money that makes MORE money decided to absorb it and the cash payout was so good that investors/founders of MC decided to say fuck it, I'm done. Take my chips, gimme the loot. 12 billion dollars is generational wealth, but I mean I just can't/won't/don't respect people that have enabled spam or a business model that encourages bombarding people with BS. Same thing with IAP - I don't respect people who work for Apple because there was a layered hierarchy of priorities that said "we want to generate revenue at the expense of the people that trust us with their consumer electronics"
I just intrinsically cannot respect people that decide to profit off of wasting people's time, the only commodity you can't generate more of. Instead of craftsmanship we have psychopathic operators that try to fine tune all the ways to extract money from others and even develop meta-endeavors where people pay others to execute activities to get end-user observers ('users' in modern web dev parlance, for the JS devs) to waste time/spend money, for net negative expected value to themselves and others. It's super sordid and I just can't endorse it. Whatever.
In 25 years these guys will probably pull a Paul Allen and then start funding brain research or something after realizing that all the money in the world can't buy time and more life.
I don't use facebook or instagram or anything anymore, and just solely rely on subscribing to the newsletters of the stuff I like: bands, exhibition spaces, museums, even fashion brands.
Giving out my email tells the almost nothing about myself, except the only valuable thing: I am interested in their services. Most newsletter providers let me opt out with two clicks and I never get any more mails from them.
It really baffles me why there are not more people who enjoy emails, but would rather have another company decide which content they get to see.
This is power, and they market it: Send an email yourself and you may be shut down, send through us and worse case scenario you will have to create a new account to continue.
At the moment their IPs are more bulletproof then their competitors. But that is all they are selling - the ability to push through spam for others.
It can, it's just that biologists aren't the ones that are winning the equities and securities game most frequently.
Given their inexperience, they throw money at things blindly, not realizing there are lower hanging fruit than the brain.
A billionaire biologist could attack the problem from first principles. And probably make measurable headway.
No, that would pay a lot of skilled workers a damn good wage for a couple of years. Yachts employ a lot of highly paid people.
But when you sell for $12B and didn't take investment so all goes directly to you, how can you not allocate at least a million for each employee and change their life? With 1200 employees that's only $1.2B. They can easily give everyone even $2M and have zero impact of their life. What two people can do with $12B which they cannot do with $9B? (Yes I know, the final amount is much less after taxes, fees, etc)
Obv they don't need to allocate money equally, it makes more sense to do it based on tenure.
I could easily give away $10k to charity and save multiple lives[1] without impacting my quality of life, and given that you are on HN, you likely have $10k you could live without as well. We are literally choosing to have money in some retirement account over saving lives - why would you expect founders to give away money just to make rich tech workers more rich?
[0]: https://the.ink/p/billionaire-wealth-just-got-wealthier [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-can-...
Amazon's tech employees are awarded shares. They are getting life changing money already. But it's not that relevant because here we're talking about a one time event that happened and the employees who were part of that success story should be compensated. It's the right thing to do.
The only argument you can make that I may partially agree with is that why giving the money to the employees. They can donate it for better causes than helping tech employees being more rich. I think in this particular case there's plenty of money to do both and the founders still be left with billions. Allocating $2B to the employees and the rest $10B to be split by the two founders and whatever donations they would like to make sounds like a win-win for everyone and a pretty rational thing to do. I'm not expecting them to give most of the money to the employees. Someone mentioned they have allocated $500M; that's really great but I still think it's too low given the amount of money. I think 10 - 15% is more reasonable.
The point of RSUs is to retain talent that is deemed critical to making the acquisition successful. Your VP of finance isn’t getting any RSUs. The acquiring company probably doesn’t need her, and she possesses no critical knowledge that any other senior financial person doesn’t also possess.
Individual developers often get higher RSUs than managers. Why? More experience with the code and domain knowledge, especially if the engineering manager wasn’t an IC who grew into the role.
I’m sad to hear that is your experience. Perhaps find an employer who wouldn’t treat you like a slave if legally allowed?
I think lying in this case would be to say to employees, "We will never sell" while negotiating a sale in the background. Timing is everything.
Employees regularly (as in, basically always) join startups for peanuts in equity compared to the equity held by founders. And they're told "we're in this together, we'll win or lose together"... without realizing that the stock they received was so tiny, that the founders' Win means a private island and trust-fund grandchildren, while their own Win will be one fifth of a down payment on a house, even in the best outcome.
The cap table isn't revealed to job candidates, but they still get vague reassurances that they're being offered a "great package." If they saw how their package compared to the founders' holdings, I think employees would demand a hell of a lot more equity, for the risk they take.
With 1200 employees, your share will inevitably be a tiny fraction.
Nowadays there are plenty of alternatives in Atlanta and no excuse for subpar comp. There are giant regional Microsoft [1], Google [2], and Facebook [3] offices, and a ton of good startups that offer equity at ATDC [4] and beyond.
After it was obvious Mailchimp wasn't the best place to work, I tried to get my Atlanta mailchimp friends to join the then-pre-IPO unicorn I worked at. My equity is now worth eight figures (well, high seven, but I sold some along the way).
I worked with someone even luckier who wound up as high C-suite of Greenlight, pre-unicorn status. Again, by not drinking the kool aid and taking charge of their career.
Mailchimp underpaid these folks. And all for a shitty PHP stack that spams people. It's a job that's one notch above working at Home Depot or The Weather Channel.
Unless you're really happy with what you do (and even if you are), shop around. You owe it to yourself. Microsoft is literally a mile away and will pay so much more.
Mailchimp is going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for talent after these offices come online. There are $300-400k jobs in the city if you look.
A good lesson for the Atlanta tech scene.
[1] https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/microsoft-announces-major-e...
[2] https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2021/03/23/google-c...
[3] https://atlanta.curbed.com/2020/3/19/21186363/facebook-atlan...
Coca Cola weren't and still aren't offering equity. Nobody describes that as "withholding equity".
Most places in the world, most jobs do not offer equity as part of compensation. And everybody understands that and chooses too apply or not based on what they are offering for compensation.
"pre-IPO unicorns" are very much the exception, very rarely actually pay off, and people who have the opportunity to shop around in that lottery should be grateful but aware that for every guy with an eight figure success story, they're are tens of thousands with some worthless option paperwork that never even made enough money to buy them a meal, let alone a house...
That's not the issue. Most jobs at companies that matter do.
Mailchimp was also super "artsy" (they hire artists to do murals), and my friends talked about how cool the founders were. This played the biggest role, I think. They had a mythos.
I'm at that awkward level where I'm paid enough that I'm at the high end of 'normal' comp for local companies. I didn't think there were jobs at the $300k level for ICs in this city though. It appears the market has changed while I wasn't looking.
The current new, at best, puts a fine point on this argument, but it doesn't change anything.
And to keep them you just have to keep working?
Maybe I should work as a unicorn as well!! Oh wait I'd rather rest on my actual cashm
> To refrain from giving or granting: synonym: keep.
The denotation is the literal dictionary definition. The connotation is the associated meaning that comes to people’s minds.
The connotation of “withholding“ is to prevent someone from getting something they are owed. Business Insider wants to imply that MC employees were owed equity, despite MC being clear and upfront about the fact this was not offered.
This way, many thousands of aggrieved employees who are unsatisfied with their career decisions and seeking someone to blame will click on the article and feel like they are victims of an unjust system. This will generate many pageviews and therefore revenue for Business Insider.
Things may change and you might sell after all, but that is not "withholding" anything, that is just things changing.
I can only imagine this story was spun by employee who saw the founders selling and getting bunch of money and now think they should have reaped some of the benefits.
Money and greed make people stupid.
What's wrong with offering equity and staying private? I don't see any deception there - say if Valve gave equity to it's employees, that'd be perfectly fine.
Of course any company can give out equity to their employees, but if it never turns into money then who cares?
Just ask partners in law firms or consultancies, or ask yourself if you’d like to own stock in Cargill, IKEA, Mars, Brown Brother Harriman, Bloomberg, Chik-fil-a, fidelity, etc.
But the average private tech company isn’t like that. There’s probably 2-4 founders who pay themselves extravagant salaries and control all voting shares. Minority equity never gets a payday.
Tech companies are usually corporations (often C corps in the startup world.) What equity gets you in the two scenarios is completely different.
Perhaps they should have. After all, without the employees' help Mailchimp wouldn't have been worth 12 billion today.
What? How is it worthless? When they distribute profits, you'll get your share of them, or you can sell the stock to someone else.
Dividends are the main source of value from stock in a company that doesn't plan to sell. But dividends are also determined by the board. In a closely-held company, the majority owners may also be the board, and they may prefer to leave the profits in the company or take them out a different way.
"Worthless" is an extreme characterization, but the value you receive from owning a minority amount of private stock is much less predictable and controllable than publicly-traded stock.
Regarding worthlessness: I suppose some might place some value on access to company financials.
Yes, that’s exactly what is happening here - and the criticism is from the employees who were lied to.
> accepting below market pay is you may later regret it
While they might’ve been paid market value, it is still quite disingenuous to deny equity and preach an independent vision. And then using the work done by employees to sellout for a massive payday.
Backstabbing and lying are the cornerstone of the startup system. People shouldn't be shocked when there's money on the line. Sad but true.
In what way does that make them different from non-billionaires?
The founders probably had the intent to stay independent, they changed their minds.
The employees got a salary to work on a mass email product. Now they are continuing to do the same.
This is just normal business, not a shift in principles.
If they were working at a public green energy foundation dedicated to open source science, and then were bought by Exxon and everything privatized, then this would be a different story.
I'll bet most employees don't really care that much as long as they keep their jobs and working conditions.
Well, I guess that’s that then. We might as well get rid of human ethics and morals, trust based systems, and justice.
Apparently, capitalism and the love of money is all we need!
I'm not sure why, in most comments not just this one, the idea that you need to be cynical and not trust someone's stated good intentions isn't included.
But presumably, the employees are told that they won't get equity, and their cash compensation is high enough to make up for it.
2. Nobody is entitled to equity. You chose to take the job knowing you weren’t getting any. Complaining about it now is idiotic. I see similar stories on HN from time to time about employees not getting equity or anything out of an acquisition. I get the feeling it’s the “we’re a team/family” vibe that causes this. People need to wake up and remember they’re simply being paid to do a job for somebody else. You’re not all best friends. If you want to be rich, take the risk and start your own company.
If this person then turns their back on that for a huge immediate payout, I can sort of understand it, but it still pisses me off.
I very much doubt they generate a lot of spam.
I have been through several acquisitions, as well as working at a firm promising significant profit sharing, then getting fucked over after they actively lie to you.
FFS when Lockheed acquired us, the c-suite got awesome money, but every other employee was fucked over.
People are douchebags during acquisitions.
I understand it feels shitty, but I don't think they have a valid complaint. I certainly don't think we should make a universal law "all companies should offer equity compensation".
It could be enforced by the contract.
You could also write a contract that says that in the event of a sale, every previous employee is given equity retrospectively in proportion to how many years they were employed.
Lots of ways.
I don't think this "nihilism-ish" view is healthy. Otherwise, you might as well just argue nobody can promise anything, and anyone who believes any promise is a fool.
IDK, can people ever really promise something in perpetuity? People and circumstances change over a lifetime. To me it is healthier and more realistic to understand this.
I wouldn't say anyone who believes a promise is a fool, though. I would say to believe a promise is to believe it that the person is sincere in their intent, and that they will make a strong effort to continue that intent going forward. But to believe that person can actually stop time and guarantee to never change is not realistic to me.
Note that I'm speaking cosmically here. In the world of business, I would say it always eventually comes down to contracts and money. Those are what business is about at its core, and to expect otherwise is madness.
Not promising equity if you never sell can be a sensible decision, because otherwise you create expectations of a cash-out that never comes.
Not promising equity if you do sell can be a sensible decision, because you keep more of the money to yourself. As long as you're transparant about not selling, employees can evaluate your remaining value proposition (salary, profit-sharing, perks) and decide whether it's worth it.
All 12k employees evaluated that value proposition and said it's worth it.
At some point the founders changed their mind. And that's okay, people change their minds. Unless they lied about it from the beginning and tricked people into a company vision they knew was bs, but the evidence doesn't clearly point to that.
Yes it’s always sensible to take more money for yourself lol. But they weren’t transparent about not selling (they said they wouldn’t and then they did so they lied). Hence why the employees feel screwed
> All 12k employees evaluated that value proposition and said it's worth it.
No, the value proposition included the promise that was later broken.
1) Founders promise not to sell. Employee is offered salary without equity.
2) Founders say nothing about selling. Employee is offered salary without equity.
In both cases the employee has lost nothing of value. Someone made the founders a pretty ridiculous offer ($12bn for $700mn revenue company). Why should they refuse? No one is being harmed by the sale apart from some employees incorrectly assuming a broken promise means they deserve a chunk of the sale .... a sale that they would NEVER have benefitted from regardless of the original promise.
Compare this to the usual startup "promise" of low salary but equity and fingers crossed we'll sell. Presumbly mailchimp had to offer higher salaries to compensate for the lack of equity offered. And if they didn't then that was a silly choice by the employee (low salary and no equity).
The stories about Google removing the line were wrong. They just moved it from the start to the end of the document.
...and get fired
The headline figure of $12B, of which maybe $1B is split between 1200 employees is almost always a fantasy.
Having been bought out by a large company, the reality is far less rosy.
If you're buying a company for both its assets, and its employees, giving all the employees "fuck you" money is a very bad play. they are going to leave and do things other than work for the new company. which means on day one you have a huge brain drain, culture shift and a hiring headache.
Therefore you need golden handcuffs. Sometimes its a year, most of the time its a lot longer.
Then we have the "headline" figures. Most of them are bollocks. Ctrl-labs supposedly was sold for $500m. It wasn't, it was significantly less than that. most peoples assumptions of what a stock option is valued at during a buyout it as much as 10x out from the actual value you'll receive. This is before we factor in the whole debt swap/priority stakes/other VC semi fraudulent share systems.
unless its an IPO, and you are given actual shares in your hands, most of the money that's talked about during buyouts is illusion.
Sometimes an acquisition works out great but this generally when a company was going to go public anyways.
We hear about all the IPO’s that made 200 overnight millionaires. But we don’t hear about the vast majority that either fail, have a poor exit, or just sort flag in the wind.
To play devils advocate, most people who intentionally optimize their career focusing on equity rather than TC know this fairly well and have had their fair share of duds. You can also make the argument that overall the EV of optimizing your career for equity is probably lower than just getting a high paying FAANG job.
However, with all that being said, the only way to be the "overnight millionaire" is to play the game. Also, there really isn't any overnight millionaires, those people probably worked for years for sub-par comp compared to alternatives and took a large risk whether knowingly or not to get that payout which may or may not have existed.
There really is no free-lunch if your employee #5 at Uber you made tens of millions of dollars, however you took the risk of being employee #5 at Uber. Look at Snapchat though they paid huge amounts of equity when they were trading in the 10's even after they IPO'd if you were employee #10002 and joined Snap at 100k-250k in equity that netted you anywhere between 600k-1.5m if you held the shares, that's not including cash comp. However, you took the risk of joining a tech company that at the time nobody really wanted to join and may very well have closed the doors.
That being said there very much is an alternative risk of going the safe route of just optimizing total TC. That risk is generally that path is well defined, the salary bands are well published, and overall despite whatever amount of effort you put in that will be around the amount you make. You'll be flogged into a corporate grind if you really want to make more either by job hopping or trying to get promoted. The risk with the defined path is well, its just that linear and well defined, not saying it's a great path and maybe even a better one overall but it means you'll be working for Facebook when the next company that is going to disrupt Facebook is potentially out there today.
Equity stakes for employees means the tails on the right side of the distribution are rich. Assuming you get a cash comp that makes you happy that equity stake my very well be the thing that puts you in the 1-10m+ range if your extremely lucky. If not even if its mildly successful a 50-500k payout with a decent salary of say 150k a year over 5 years netted you 160-250k comp a year while putting you in the run to make potentially millions.
If you work for a "startup" that is a decent place to work and respects WLB etc then taking those "risks" over your career might make a-lot of sense. You'll probably learn way more too, have more autonomy, and frankly they can just be alot of fun.
If employees had options/stock, it would be worth exactly as much, since there’s no preferred shares or outside investment to make good on first.
I still believe MC is somewhat better than the more common scenarios where employee pay more in taxes on stock than what they get from stock
Even founders will always have vesting schedules for stock granted.
I would say it probably A lot of people stick around way longer than otherwise because of equity grants making it financially sensible to do so.
There are plenty of ways to retain talent in public or private companies while granting stock options.
I mean treating it as a lump sum you only ever pull from without any appreciation in value and you can bankroll your descendants to the tune of $10,000,000 per year for 1200 years.
If the explanation the company gives you for not giving equity is that they're never going to sell, but they end up selling, how is that not being tricked?
Seems like a pretty cut and dry case of bait and switch. Why even tell people you're never going to sell? How about, "equity is not a part of the compensation package we offer," with no false justification?
Acquisitions suck. Depending on the $ amounts/growth trajectories/timelines/etc I'd potentially take less TC up front to avoid one.
It's also easier to convince people they'd rather have cash than equity if you tell them the equity will never be liquid.
https://twitter.com/michaelmartocci/status/14379982016599203...
12 billion is "ascend to the highest rungs of of wealth" level money. 12 billion puts you into the top 3000 list, looking at wikipedia's billionaire count.
You lot are all liars.
If you don't think your best friend, your parents, your wife/husband, or your children - would not sell you out for $6billion, I reckon you're deluding yourself.
That much money just to go back on a promise to not sell would be a very easy decision (bear in mind that no material harm is done to the employees, no equity was promised, no equity was given, they never had a chance to share in the sale regardless of the founders' promise)
After 15 days the split was announced. :D
So don't believe any single word from any CEO/Founder.
Not that I was surprised. When it comes to strategies and mission, I just don't believe anyone in any position of authority in a company, from the CEO all the way to line managers. The only strategy is to make money, and if anyone at any time thinks they'll make more money doing the opposite of what they promised, they'll flip in a minute.
Is this possible? How would you go about this? I'm currently in a situation where I'd love to know if "surprise sale" can be avoided.
You either join with lower salary + equity, or higher salary and no equity. (and equity is always a lottery ticket)
You shouldn't trust anyone saying "they would never", especially in business. Situations change, people change their mind, opportunities change, lives change, regulations change and so on.
<20 minutes later>
"I'm not selling the company, the trust is. I said *I* would never sell, but the other trustees are selling it, not me. I can't prevent this"
<20 minutes later>
"OK everyone listen, good luck, I've got my $5B so yeah, lol? Laters!"
Realize that "they would never sell" means they don't plan to sell, but there is a number that would change that decision. So ask what that number is. 100M? 1B? 10B?
Get 1/100 of them to pay you 10$/month and you have 7 billion dollars / year.
You as an employee are not entitled to equity at all. That's incentive, not required.
And equity isn't a great offer either. How many startups REGULARLY fail before they even get out the door?
For everyone talking about how much money they made off of equity options, we can find plenty more that lost out on a chunk of their monthly salary.
I'm not saying don't take equity, but let's be honest: Identifying if a company has the potential for their equity share to outweigh the lost salary requires skills and knowledge most of us don't have.
When execs get a visit from the gold faerie, it's just good manners to spread around some of the manna.
Nobody explained this to me, and I spent over two decades running the employee rat race.
Most races take your time and energy, leaving you with far less reward than they promised (no matter how much you excel).
Young ones, let this be a lesson. Struggle and be poor for a decade if necessary, but build your own business. After 15-20 years you will probably be way ahead of your same age employee people.
If you say something, you should mean it, and you should be held to it. Please stop making excuses for liars.
I don't see how "we weren't given equity but now they sold" is an issue. It doesn't change anything about your past payout. Yes, you would have been better of had you gotten equity, but you probably would have given up salary for that. Apparently you found the "no equity" deal acceptable.
Why does being sold make the old compensation scheme unfair all of a sudden. Its not like employees have a right to equity. It is somewhat standard, but here it was clear enough ahead of time that there would be no equity. The given reason for why they do not offer equity turned out to be wrong. But why does the reason you did not get equity matters? Would a different reason for not giving equity have changed whether you had accepted the job?
"Just" $83k per year in bonuses. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, considering other posters who said MC paid pretty well and had good benefits.
Tons of startups use equity as an excuse to under-pay and most go under, leaving the employees with useless stock and having earned less in their prime years than they could have.
The exception is Ann Arbor where they understand and value equity. It's also where they have the strongest startup culture. But things are starting to change in Detroit.
I am certain they never wanted to screw anyone and they identified with their "bootstrapping, never sell" culture. I am guilty of the raising bootstrapping to pedestal for many years and understand their values.
Learning from this, it may be good not to a) identify with current beliefs as we might change priorities and learn new things in the future, and b) talk in length about our current beliefs. Perhaps "we don't think we will ever sell and have optimized our business for that, but who knows what future will bring" might have worked better.
On this story though, as long as it’s clear to both parties what the deal is, I think it’s fine to either offer or not offer equity. And a promise not to sell is obviously meaningless unless the corporate structure somehow enforces it.
We've been trying to placate the working class for decades now by convincing they should feel ownership in their work and careers. And now you go and say the quiet part out loud that it's actually all a lie and labor is just enriching capital. 10% of the profits may be generously trickled back down to you by your gilded overlords.
It would be refreshingly honest if these founders could just come out and be proud of the fact that they managed to keep the company entirely out of employee hands, and are each probably ~$2b richer because of it. Have some dignity.
Turns out though, I end up being a NetSuite Expert due to their move.
I mean when you start a newsletter company, do you really think you would sell it for 12B?
Don‘t forget it means they didn‘t try to sell at: - 1 million USD - 10 million USD - 100 million USD - 1.000 million USD - 5.000 million USD - 10.000 million USD
How many non-founder equity holders who are „just working a job“ would not have tried to sell their equity at an earlier evaluation?
Assuming they really did not want to sell, honestly, 12B for a newsletter tool seems worth changing your mind.
The inverse would actually be evil. Imagine being granted equity and a below market wage in a company that the founder never sold.
Content: "It was part of the company lore that they would never sell"
Maybe such promises were made, but the article is pretty scant on evidence.
I do wonder. MailChimp employees are probably respected, and could find something else quick. Why don't they threaten to walk out? Without employees, what is the company actually?
The only reason to join a company based on mission or whathaveyou is if it's a non-profit. Maybe, -maybe- if it has done things that hurt the bottom line, to the betterment of employees, that have no precedent in industry (i.e., Gravity Payments), but even then, you benefit from that, so it still counts as comp to my eyes.
That said, I came from Texas. When we started seeing a flood of people from high income regions moving to Texas and driving up home (and other area costs) I realized high inflation states had beat the system. People that lived decently there were royalty when they moved to Texas. I eventually moved to California, and my RSU plan is what made my savings go from $0 to on track within 3 years.
If I can say anything to founders in the Midwest and South: pay RSUs. It's the difference between retirement and spending your entire life working.
If you aren’t offered equity, the company’s decision on whether to sell or remain private is completely irrelevant to you. Whatever happens, you’re not going to benefit anyway. Why even give a shit? Do your job and collect your paycheck, don’t catch feelings thinking you’re part owner. You knew the deal going in, now you want to alter it after the fact for your own benefit? Just another case of people seeing a pile of money and wanting to grab a piece.
If you wanted equity and chose to work there anyway hoping that someday the founders might throw you a bone in case they changed their minds and decided to sell, you’re a fool.
People just need to own the choices they make.
Don't work for such people. Regardless if they give you equity or not.
People and circumstances change.
Sort of a poison pill that benefits employees during an exit.
Only to see the balloon popped with the other side info on HN a couple of days later.
When one voluntarily terminates a relationship with a company, and agrees to a settlement as part of that, that's it.
Very little discussion about how Mailchimp services will perform under Intuit, here.
So the lesson is don't make zero equity and zero exits your personality trait, but probably do the same things either way.
Now you know how the world works.
(Spam definition, per Spamhaus: "All email sent unsolicited and in bulk is Spam.")
I'd be furious, personally.
E: It appears employees are getting stock and/or payouts after the deal closes. This article is either outdated or misinformed, or both. [1]
[0] https://twitter.com/benchestnut/status/1437514331059630089
[1] https://twitter.com/benchestnut/status/1437869751091535875
