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Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

investors.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

#61

Post by gojomo »

not2b wrote: post #47
rodw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to edit the HN post title to be more accurate? "Zoom CEO sold $24m worth of stock" is still a pretty compelling headline.

How about "Zoom CEO sold 0.5% of his stock", which would be just as accurate but less compelling. He sold $24m, still has roughly 4 billion.

The best synthesis would be something like:

"Zoom CEO sells $24M from his $10B Zoom stake"

The current headline, "Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares", is technically correct but highly misleading – but's it's still interesting to see what a founder on a rocketship is doing to diversify a little, even in the particulars of the conversion/disclosure & how it's (mis-)interpreted by peanut galleries everywhere.

Re: Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

#62

Post by gbear605 »

gojomo wrote: post #60
gbear605 wrote: post #25

Perhaps this isn’t the best thing for the company, but personally, I can’t imagine having even ten million dollars in stocks (what seems to be the value of the stocks sold per my calculation) and wanting to just keep them there, especially in a single stock. Sell it all, and donate all but three or four million. That’s more enough money to live the rest of your life in a very comfortable way. What’s the point of havi…

The point of owning more stock (or wealth in general) is often not simply "living comfortably" or any sort of pure consumption. If that's your framing, lots of large-scale economic behavior will remain unimaginable. Similarly, it's not "just a rat race to show off", either – though there's some of that, as a psychological motive among the very-rich. That's still not sufficient to describe the logic of what's actually…

Personally, I can’t imagine someone caring about that at all. Especially when you compare it to the possibility of saving hundreds of thousands of lives (https://www.givewell.org/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-...).

But yes, some people clearly care about this sort of power above all else.

Re: Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

#63

Post by apta »

fra wrote: post #37
dkyc wrote: post #7

This is complete nonsense. He sold about $23m worth of stock [1], while he owned about 22% of stock at the time of IPO, worth roughly ~$10b in total. [1] https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1135874/zoom-video-communicat...

Came here to say this. He started with 0 shares of class A stock, and ends with 0 shares of class A stock. What he did do is convert $23m worth of class B stock into class A stock, and sell it. Adding up all the class B stock & options he holds at the end of the transaction (Table II, column 9), he still holds ~50M shares (worth ~$165 a pop as of this writing).

> he still holds ~50M shares (worth ~$165 a pop as of this writing).

I don't understand people like this. What could you possibly do with all that money? Just sell and retire.

Re: Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

#64

Post by gojomo »

gbear605 wrote: post #62
gojomo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of owning more stock (or wealth in general) is often not simply "living comfortably" or any sort of pure consumption. If that's your framing, lots of large-scale economic behavior will remain unimaginable. Similarly, it's not "just a rat race to show off", either – though there's some of that, as a psychological motive among the very-rich. That's still not sufficient to describe the logic of what's actually…

Personally, I can’t imagine someone caring about that at all. Especially when you compare it to the possibility of saving hundreds of thousands of lives ( https://www.givewell.org/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-... ). But yes, some people clearly care about this sort of power above all else.

Yet, if no one cared about "this sort of power" – the creative possibilities of large-scale enterprises under the control of those most engaged – we wouldn't have these computers, this internet, this HN.

And Bill Gates is likely going to save (if he hasn't already) many more lives with his post-ambitious-building wealth, than if he'd cashed out as soon as he had "three or four million… to live the rest of [his] life in a very comfortable way", and donated the rest at that early moment.

Re: Zoom CEO sold all of his common shares

#65

Post by kxr »

apta wrote: post #63
fra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this. He started with 0 shares of class A stock, and ends with 0 shares of class A stock. What he did do is convert $23m worth of class B stock into class A stock, and sell it. Adding up all the class B stock & options he holds at the end of the transaction (Table II, column 9), he still holds ~50M shares (worth ~$165 a pop as of this writing).

> he still holds ~50M shares (worth ~$165 a pop as of this writing). I don't understand people like this. What could you possibly do with all that money? Just sell and retire.

You assume becoming a billionaire is the endgame here.
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