What's more frightening to me is how many VCs and other investors who went along with the charade and did not care that this criminal was a representative of them.
Whoa, slow your roll. i) this is a civil matter, ii) both parties settled, with probably no admission of any wrongdoing by either party. Throwing around labels such as "criminal" is not something one does lightly. If you're not careful you could be soon facing a civil action of your own for libel.
I was going to link to the mandatory reading of Joel Spolsky's canonical answer on splitting shares in startups between founders and beyond. But as Stack Exchange's policy of shuttering less popular subsites that is now lost in its original form :( It was originally here http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-s... Is there a good reproduction elsewhere?
Found it copied here: http://www.gravitycomputing.co.nz/joels-totally-fair-method-... """ This is such a common question here and elsewhere that I will attempt to write the world’s most canonical answer to this question. Hopefully in the future when someone on answers.onstartups asks how to split up the ownership of their new company, you can simply point to this answer. The most important principle: Fairness, and th…
What about differentiation between voting and non-voting shares?
Money. Greed. It destroys more friendships (and marriages) than anything else.
So what's the lesson here? Don't be careless. I don't care what the idea (startup) is - get the details on paper. True, 99% of startups fail, but you don't want to be in that 1% that's making the lawyers rich.
As a co-founder who got screwed on a large acquisition, it makes me happy to see that Snapchat finally settled. However, a settlement doesn't change the fact that Evan Spiegel really went out of his way to intentionally screw the guy that actually invented Snapchat's model - and seemed to enjoy doing it. He's definitely not someone I'd ever do business with. http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-lawsuit-video-depos…
A few friends of mine saw Evan speak at Stanford this past spring. He was in a room with Eric Schmidt and Sam Altman (IIRC) and his attitude towards them was nothing short of smug. I don't remember the specifics of what he said but my friends said he basically "told Eric, Sam and other prominent VCs on the panel off because he thought he was more successful than them".
Found it copied here: http://www.gravitycomputing.co.nz/joels-totally-fair-method-... """ This is such a common question here and elsewhere that I will attempt to write the world’s most canonical answer to this question. Hopefully in the future when someone on answers.onstartups asks how to split up the ownership of their new company, you can simply point to this answer. The most important principle: Fairness, and th…
I think having the founders own a total of 50% is a seemingly high risk but that is totally opinion based. If the other entire 50% rise up in agreement could they halt the company? Wouldn't 60-40 in favor of the founders give them a little more leverage because after all it is their shared idea/vision/etc and they should be shouldering a large part of the risk. If you're ever in a situation where the entire remainder…
If you're especially worried about it, you can pick one co-founder (perhaps the CEO) and give him +1 share so the money is still relatively even but the cofounders can outvote the rest. In practice I think once you have a board, it's more important to control the board than worry about base share distribution.
Seems a bit comical that the article claims this to be the first disappearing photo app. I created and launched one myself a year before Snapchat started... The normal way for start founders to receive equity, is only from one or more of these 3 things: - For hours worked, based on the vesting and usually the hours must be beyond the cliff or you get nothing. - If you built a crucial part of the IP that the company n…
People care about voting way too much. It's worth noting that you rarely end up with more than -1 or -2 votes. Write a single popular comment and it more than makes up for it. I'm not sure what your comment about "people linking to old comments" means. Either you stand by your comments or you don't. Edit. The comment I replied was by the user "compare"[1] and said the following: In this case, it was people linking to…
One could argue that the most valuable feedback for a writer is on comments that are rght on the boundary between their viewpoint and alternate viewpoints. Culturally, it would be more valuable if people replied with their reason for disagreement.
Downvotes are clearly intended for moderation (visibility change of font), but are easy to misuse for passive debate.