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Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

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Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#51

Post by lobster_johnson »

tptacek wrote: post #48
lobster_johnson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1200/year, not per month, and according to this tweek the business had "tanked" in recent years: https://twitter.com/monstro/status/585797874300035072 . Edit: Actually $1200/month according to the pricing page, nevermind. That's insane, and way above competitors like ZenDesk.

Are we thinking of the same Zendesk? The Zendesk I know is a public company with 9-figure topline revenue.

According to the pricing page, Get Satisfaction's only public pricing is the $1,200/mo subscription. ZenDesk starts at $25m/agent for the community solution.

Granted, they are slightly different products; I was just grabbing the nearest competitor I could think of. (They're in the same space, though, and competing directly for the community/knowledge base part of their products.)

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#52

Post by DonHopkins »

StavrosK wrote: post #12
socceroos wrote: post #9

Judging by the tweets mentioned and linked in this thread, there are going to be some interesting articles come out of this. I for one would love to see the intricacies of investor influence. This sounds like it was a total fluster cluck.

> fluster cluck Does the extra "l" bother anyone else?

Flustr Cluckr

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#53

Post by leereeves »

adventured wrote: post #44
prostoalex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot about the debt holders. So if there was any debt (including un-converted convertible notes), the pecking order is: 1) Debt holders 2) Most senior shareholders and their liquidation preference 3) Less senior shareholders and their liquidation preference ... 99) Common stock holders This is actually to align the founder incentives in shooting for a big exit. Insert any other order of preferences, and the found…

Investors don't inherently get screwed in the process of a quick flip if they have common shares. It means the investor is directly aligned with the founders, and makes it harder for the investor to get a return at the expense of the founders. Investor puts in $1m for 20%. Founders quick flip for $30m. The investor just made six times his money, and earned a payout fully aligned with the founders. Absolutely nobody g…

Liquidation preferences exist to protect against a company raising $10 million for 20% and selling for $5 million, with the founders taking a nice payoff of $4 million and the investor losing all but $1 million.

In that scenario, without liquidation preferences, the interests of the founders and investors aren't aligned--the founders profit while the investors lose money.

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#54

Post by pbreit »

tomglindmeier wrote: post #22
prostoalex wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost any significant round outside of seed would come with liquidation preference. CrunchBase says a total of $20.9 was raised, so if the final sale price was less then $20,900,001.00, there's likely no money left for common stock.

Interesting. I didn't know that. I understand that if expectations are not met there have to be consequences. But leaving the founders of a company with nothing while others earning money feels completely wrong.

It's unlikely anyone earned any money. Some investors might have gotten some of their investment back.

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#55

Post by late2part »

lukasm wrote: post #6
r0naa wrote: post #2

How is that even possible?

liquidation preference?

Liquidation is usually the multiple of the investment money, that the investor gets back before anyone else gets their money. Like earlier explained, later investors generally get senior rights to earlier investors; so they get their money out first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidation_preference

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#56

Post by [deleted] »

gojomo wrote: post #46
SwellJoe wrote: post #42

I have very limited knowledge of this situation, but, I'm gonna pile on anyway: With that kind of money raised, the founders didn't get "nothing". They got a salary, probably a decent one, for however long they were running the thing. Which is more than many startup founders get out of businesses that fail. If they don't have personal debt, or didn't lose relationships or friendships, they came out ahead of many star…

We'll see! The founders of GetSatisfaction weren't spring chickens, unaware of the costs-of-capital raised. But sometimes later management and investors do engage in shenanigans. Some will remember Naval Ravikant et al's suit against a cofounder and VCs back in 2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/26iht-dotcom.ht... http://venturebeat.com/2005/12/09/epinions-settlement-a-blac... Though I'm not sure it's…

[deleted]

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#57

Post by bananaboy »

mattmanser wrote: post #33
x0x0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my memory is incorrect, but they were kind of sketchy; their page implied companies not paying them weren't interested in customer interaction and they wanted $1200/year to get rid of competitors' ads before 37 signals called them out: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else

I seem to remember at the time there was about 1/2 year - year where Google loved them and you'd get a Get Satisfaction result for googling "[company name] support". GS were HN darlings for a little bit, then started getting annoying because you'd land on this pointless page, then 37signals (rightfully) publicly called them out, then google seemed to delist them in a panda or something and then everyone forgot about…

Whenever I ended up on a getsatisfaction page after searching for something I always felt like I had landed on some kind of dodgy crappy aggregator rather than anything official.

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#59

Post by alain94040 »

adventured wrote: post #44
prostoalex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot about the debt holders. So if there was any debt (including un-converted convertible notes), the pecking order is: 1) Debt holders 2) Most senior shareholders and their liquidation preference 3) Less senior shareholders and their liquidation preference ... 99) Common stock holders This is actually to align the founder incentives in shooting for a big exit. Insert any other order of preferences, and the found…

Investors don't inherently get screwed in the process of a quick flip if they have common shares. It means the investor is directly aligned with the founders, and makes it harder for the investor to get a return at the expense of the founders. Investor puts in $1m for 20%. Founders quick flip for $30m. The investor just made six times his money, and earned a payout fully aligned with the founders. Absolutely nobody g…

Try again with an exit at $2M and you'll see why the investors wouldn't be happy with common stock.

Re: Sprinklr Acquires GetSatisfaction, Founders Get Nothing

#60

Post by moe »

mattmanser wrote: post #33
x0x0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my memory is incorrect, but they were kind of sketchy; their page implied companies not paying them weren't interested in customer interaction and they wanted $1200/year to get rid of competitors' ads before 37 signals called them out: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else

I seem to remember at the time there was about 1/2 year - year where Google loved them and you'd get a Get Satisfaction result for googling "[company name] support". GS were HN darlings for a little bit, then started getting annoying because you'd land on this pointless page, then 37signals (rightfully) publicly called them out, then google seemed to delist them in a panda or something and then everyone forgot about…

then google seemed to delist them in a panda

And rightfully so. They were a pest, just like the spam-site by that Calamaris guy from Netscape around the same time.

Lesson learned: If you depend on search traffic then don't be obnoxious. Otherwise nobody will speak up for you when Google snaps your neck.

Hey Google, why is Quora (expert-sexchange 2.0) still polluting my search results anyway?

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