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Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

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Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#21

Post by rational_indian »

ponyous wrote: post #16
wingerlang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. how much of a graveyard it can become at times Could you expand on this? I don't use Twitter enough to know the subtleties of it.

For me it feels like graveyard when I search for a hashtag that interest me and all I see are promotions and links to other pages. I want to see actual discussions among people like me so I can participate. Note: I don't truly understand how to use Twitter...

>Note: I don't truly understand how to use Twitter...

Does anyone?

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#22

Post by k__ »

mattmanser wrote: post #20
afro88 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Platforms with millions of users never fail quickly. Yes they do. When a better product arrives that gains enough traction, users migrate very quickly. Myspace, Altavista, Aol etc.

ICQ is a better example of how quickly people abandon communications platforms. Everyone used to use ICQ.

Well, people used MySpace a long time. It even got relaunched a few times. So it din't die quick.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#23

Post by onion2k »

afro88 wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that's worth adding - Twitter as a corporation might be in trouble, but Twitter as a product is not. If the corporation fails then the product would be bought by Facebook/Google/Apple/etc and carry on for a very long time yet. Twitter might be hard (impossible?) to successfully monetize to the point where it's actually profitable, but as a platform it still has a huge amount of value that lots of people wou…

> Platforms with millions of users never fail quickly. Yes they do. When a better product arrives that gains enough traction, users migrate very quickly. Myspace, Altavista, Aol etc.

Not really. Only AltaVista is dead.

MySpace: Still going at https://myspace.com/

Altavista: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista - shut down in 2013, 10 years after it was sold to Yahoo!.

AOL: Very much still alive at http://www.aol.com, owns sites like Huffington Post.

And in response to mattmanser, ICQ: Still going at https://icq.com/

They may not be the behemoths of the tech industry any more but they are definitely not dead. And the only one that is dead took a decade before it was shut down.

Sites with millions of users never die quickly.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#24

Post by adventured »

onion2k wrote: post #23
afro88 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Platforms with millions of users never fail quickly. Yes they do. When a better product arrives that gains enough traction, users migrate very quickly. Myspace, Altavista, Aol etc.

Not really. Only AltaVista is dead. MySpace: Still going at https://myspace.com/ Altavista: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista - shut down in 2013, 10 years after it was sold to Yahoo!. AOL: Very much still alive at http://www.aol.com , owns sites like Huffington Post. And in response to mattmanser, ICQ: Still going at https://icq.com/ They may not be the behemoths of the tech industry any more but they are defi…

Your position of never is not correct.

Formspring failed extremely fast.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/formspring-the-pioneering-a...

It was one of the fastest growing services in Web history, and unraveled just as fast.

The existing service was completely shut down. The homepage is now some kind of funnel for another service.

And an example that wasn't market based: Megaupload. 180 million users, killed overnight.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#25

Post by Tinyyy »

Dwolb wrote: post #3

This is a little weird. Jack Dorsey is not a majority owner of Twitter and so he can't do whatever the heck he wants. Most companies would ask the board for approval to issue more shares for its employees - this did not happen. So then the question is, 'why does Jack feel compelled to donate his shares more than any other Twitter shareholder?' One reason could be Jack is a philanthropist and believes in giving back t…

I don’t think your math is correct. If he gave away 1% to Twitter employees, then he has 2% left, or 380MM. In order for these stocks to be worth 570MM, their price has to increase by 50%, which means that their market cap increases from 19B to 29B.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#26

Post by genmon »

One important datapoint is that Jack Dorsey did something very similar at Square in December 2013: http://fortune.com/2013/12/20/squares-dorsey-returns-10-of-h...

Judging by how strong the Square team is, and how much he's respected there, I imagine this move is now part of his playbook to build a great organisation. It's courageous.

From the link above:

> Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Square, has voluntarily given 10% of his shares in the company back to Square. The highly unusual move will expand significantly the pool of shares available for employee compensation and acquisitions while minimizing dilution for shareholders.

> Dorsey owns approximately 30% of Square and is giving back about 3% of the company’s total equity. The shares Dorsey is returning are worth between $97.5 million and $150 million based on estimates of the company’s valuation.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#27

Post by Dwolb »

Tinyyy wrote: post #25
Dwolb wrote: post #3

This is a little weird. Jack Dorsey is not a majority owner of Twitter and so he can't do whatever the heck he wants. Most companies would ask the board for approval to issue more shares for its employees - this did not happen. So then the question is, 'why does Jack feel compelled to donate his shares more than any other Twitter shareholder?' One reason could be Jack is a philanthropist and believes in giving back t…

I don’t think your math is correct. If he gave away 1% to Twitter employees, then he has 2% left, or 380MM. In order for these stocks to be worth 570MM, their price has to increase by 50%, which means that their market cap increases from 19B to 29B.

Yessir you are correct. Thanks :)

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#28

Post by Dwolb »

grinich wrote: post #7
Dwolb wrote: post #3

This is a little weird. Jack Dorsey is not a majority owner of Twitter and so he can't do whatever the heck he wants. Most companies would ask the board for approval to issue more shares for its employees - this did not happen. So then the question is, 'why does Jack feel compelled to donate his shares more than any other Twitter shareholder?' One reason could be Jack is a philanthropist and believes in giving back t…

> effort to make short term investments to save the company by investing in the people that matter most those seem like long-term investments to me

I think it's debatable. Is a one time bonus to employees long term or short term? Since it's equity and not cash it probably depends on the structure of the deal.

It's only one tactic in the company's overall strategy for long term viability. My hunch is the move is closer to an emergency maneuver to address immediate issues.

Re: Jack Dorsey gives 1% Twitter stock to employee equity pool

#30

Post by ViViDboarder »

gsibble wrote: post #12

This is simply a tax move. Dorsey is going to pay hundreds of millions in capital gains taxes when Square goes public later this year. He gets to take this as a loss which he can write off against those taxes. It's essentially free. Great PR stunt but doesn't cost him a dime.

How can you write off gifts? Twitter is not a 401c3. This isn't a donation.
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