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Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

peteradkison.com

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Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#11

Post by cperciva »

patio11 wrote: post #6
cperciva wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem here is grossly misvaluing the company (i.e. the total value of 100% of the shares) at the time new shares were issued. Aha, that makes much more sense. So the problem wasn't that they didn't have founders' shares, or that they didn't have enough shares; but rather that they were selling off shares at ridiculously low prices. Tarsnap Backup Inc. officially has 100 Common shares outstanding, bu…

I would certainly not suggest giving away those 100 common shares for picodollars because that would compromise your business results and make it affirmatively more difficult for sophisticated investors to join you, leaving your company to only receive investment from worse investors. By the way, I signed up for Tarsnap and am using it "in anger" for Appointment Reminder. My predicted bill for this month is something…

My predicted bill for this month is something on the order of 60 cents.

Great! And if you're like most Tarsnap users on that scale, you go around telling everybody about how awesome and inexpensive Tarsnap is.

Seriously, I have lots of customers who pay me less than $1 in cash each month, but orders of magnitude more in free advertising.

I would [...] prefer to pay $100 per month ...

I think you're the first Tarsnap customer to say this. Send me an email and I'll see what I can do for you. ;-)

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#12

Post by bigiain »

bigiain wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would certainly not suggest giving away those 100 common shares for picodollars because that would compromise your business results and make it affirmatively more difficult for sophisticated investors to join you, leaving your company to only receive investment from worse investors. By the way, I signed up for Tarsnap and am using it "in anger" for Appointment Reminder. My predicted bill for this month is something…

Let me introduce you to "Bigiain's Managed Tarsnap Backup Service" - for the low low monthly fee of $99.40 (on top of Tarsnap backup charges), we'll provide you with a professionally monitored, secured, authenticated, managed, and 100% guaranteed digital _and_ paper invoicing service - complete with 99.999% SLAs on the invoicing and _punishingly_ punitive guarantees of eventual consistency in your long term invoice a…

Perhaps a little less cynically, I wonder if there's a market for "Enterprise sales as a service"?

How many Tarsnap-like services are there, which with the right salespeople and a 5,000+% markup could be sold into "The Enterprise" - which would be a completely non-competitive demographic to the developer/startup trying to sell at Patrick, iterested in going 50:50 partners in BEMTBS? (Bigiain's Enterprise Managed Tarsnap Backup Service) You do sales, I'd handle "fullfillment" (read: invoicing), out of goodwill we can cut Colin in for 15% of all sales (and not even charge him commission on the Tarsnap bills incurred by our customers).

(Oh, and Patrick, BTW - my offer above of our $99.40/month plan is the "Personal Plan". Our "Business Plan", which includes all the features of the Personal Plan plus the words "Business Plan" on each invoice and statement is $248.40/month, and our "Enterprise Plan", which includes everything with the Business Plan plus the words "Enterprise Plan" on the invoices and statements _plus_ up to 3 faxed copies of each invoice as well as the PDF and USPS physical/paper mailed copies, is only $499/month.)

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#13

Post by cperciva »

bigiain wrote: post #12
bigiain wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me introduce you to "Bigiain's Managed Tarsnap Backup Service" - for the low low monthly fee of $99.40 (on top of Tarsnap backup charges), we'll provide you with a professionally monitored, secured, authenticated, managed, and 100% guaranteed digital _and_ paper invoicing service - complete with 99.999% SLAs on the invoicing and _punishingly_ punitive guarantees of eventual consistency in your long term invoice a…

Perhaps a little less cynically, I wonder if there's a market for "Enterprise sales as a service"? How many Tarsnap-like services are there, which with the right salespeople and a 5,000+% markup could be sold into "The Enterprise" - which would be a completely non-competitive demographic to the developer/startup trying to sell at Patrick, iterested in going 50:50 partners in BEMTBS? (Bigiain's Enterprise Managed Tars…

Patrick: Please say yes.

Seriously, I'd love to see people reselling Tarsnap. This is the main reason I provide accounting details in CSV format. As long as you pay me for your / your customers' usage, I don't care how much you charge your customers.

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#14

Post by dasil003 »

bigiain wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would certainly not suggest giving away those 100 common shares for picodollars because that would compromise your business results and make it affirmatively more difficult for sophisticated investors to join you, leaving your company to only receive investment from worse investors. By the way, I signed up for Tarsnap and am using it "in anger" for Appointment Reminder. My predicted bill for this month is something…

Let me introduce you to "Bigiain's Managed Tarsnap Backup Service" - for the low low monthly fee of $99.40 (on top of Tarsnap backup charges), we'll provide you with a professionally monitored, secured, authenticated, managed, and 100% guaranteed digital _and_ paper invoicing service - complete with 99.999% SLAs on the invoicing and _punishingly_ punitive guarantees of eventual consistency in your long term invoice a…

but... are you bonded?

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#15

Post by bretpiatt »

jacalata wrote: post #9

The story of all the small investors surprised me, because i thought there were more rules about who could invest in a company. Are these rules new, or do i misunderstand something?

I'm a "suit", without a "Esq.", so if you want real detail here perhaps an attorney with a focus on equity issuance can reply.

Rules do exist about non-accredited investors buying shares of private companies or shares in public company private placement. Those rules give the "little guy" extra rights. This is why you won't see them investing capital in venture led financing rounds or able to trade on places such as Second Market.

Non-accredited investors end up with equity in private companies all the time through "Founder's stock" or grants from the option pool. They may even put in "seed money" to get it started so often in a venture backed company you'll have some early capital from what gets called "friend and family money".

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#16

Post by michaelochurch »

patio11 wrote: post #2

This is one of the reasons why I like HN, because nothing in my lower-to-middle-class upbringing prepared me for the notion of stock as anything other than shares of IBM which you held at the brokerage until you needed to retire. Pretty much everything I learned about the mechanics of tech investing I learned as a direct consequence of this site, in many cases to material effect. One would hope that investors, on dea…

One would hope that investors, on dealing with unsophisticated entrepreneurs, would tell them "Hey, it seems like you don't know the ropes of this yet, let me explain it to you" but the overwhelming number of anecdotes where I hear that have that sentence followed by advice so bad it shocks the conscience.

Most people know that when they deal with savvier and more experienced people in the upper class, they're at serious risk (okay, high probability) of getting an unfair deal, but their model of "unfair" is 60/40 or 70/30, which most people can accept in the course of getting their vision off the ground. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game

In practice, it's often more like 95/5 or even 99/1. The people who know the game and have the power take almost all of it, and leave just enough to keep people motivated to produce.

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#17

Post by michaelochurch »

This is painful to read, especially the part about rich establishment late-comers whining about early, small investors getting "too much" payoff. Apparently people from middle-class backgrounds who "got lucky" don't deserve it. This reminds me of when Mark PinkAss whined in public about the Google chef making $20 million.

The people at the top of society really don't want anyone else to win because, as they see the world (and the OP clearly does not subscribe to this) it's completely zero-sum. These people do not believe in fairness at all. They're constantly looking for ways to take advantage of people, which I suppose is how they ended up at the top, but it makes the world ugly and I wish it would stop.

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#18

Post by simonh »

michaelochurch wrote: post #17

This is painful to read, especially the part about rich establishment late-comers whining about early, small investors getting "too much" payoff. Apparently people from middle-class backgrounds who "got lucky" don't deserve it. This reminds me of when Mark PinkAss whined in public about the Google chef making $20 million. The people at the top of society really don't want anyone else to win because, as they see the w…

It wasn't a case of establishment late-comers whining. It was a case of establishment late comers not actually coming at all, late or not, because the system was rigged so they couldn't make any money. Since WoTC needed the investment, it was WoTC's problem and so they amended their terms.

If you're in a situation where you need to borrow people's money, it's up to you to offer terms that are acceptable to them. If you don't, then there's no law that says they have to lend to you.

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#19

Post by hobs »

cperciva wrote: post #13
bigiain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a little less cynically, I wonder if there's a market for "Enterprise sales as a service"? How many Tarsnap-like services are there, which with the right salespeople and a 5,000+% markup could be sold into "The Enterprise" - which would be a completely non-competitive demographic to the developer/startup trying to sell at Patrick, iterested in going 50:50 partners in BEMTBS? (Bigiain's Enterprise Managed Tars…

Patrick: Please say yes. Seriously, I'd love to see people reselling Tarsnap. This is the main reason I provide accounting details in CSV format. As long as you pay me for your / your customers' usage, I don't care how much you charge your customers.

A match made in heaven.

Re: Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1

#20

Post by JabavuAdams »

michaelochurch wrote: post #17

This is painful to read, especially the part about rich establishment late-comers whining about early, small investors getting "too much" payoff. Apparently people from middle-class backgrounds who "got lucky" don't deserve it. This reminds me of when Mark PinkAss whined in public about the Google chef making $20 million. The people at the top of society really don't want anyone else to win because, as they see the w…

In general, I think these behaviours are better explained by the Hedonic Treadmill theory, rather than by malice.

If your $1M house isn't perfect, you start looking at $2M houses. If your monthly costs are what other people hope to make in a year, any decrease in your means seems horrible and unfair.

This doesn't address Pincus' comments, but there are jealous rich as well as jealous not-rich.

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