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Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

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Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#101

Post by gsibble »

mikestew wrote: post #62
cyanydeez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the board strokes is: Google should have bought the company. They didnt. They basically bought the employees. They call it a "acquihire". Without these employees, the real value of the company fell, allowing cognition to buy the company. Had the employee taken employement with Google, it's likely their shares in windsurf would have been voided, or otherwise not vested. Who knows, these private corporations are often…

Google should have bought the company. They didnt. They basically bought the employees. They call it a "acquihire". That's just called "hiring". In order to "acquire-hire" employees of the target company, one must first "acquire" the company and the "hiring" part just comes along with the deal. In this case, Google skipped the "acquire" part.

The VCs all got paid their multiples.

Google put a ton of money into the company which then repurchased select people's stock while leaving everyone else high and dry.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#102

Post by phkahler »

agartner wrote: post #21
hackermeows wrote: post #16

why would anyone work in startups as early devs anymore. Tell me what is the upside? There seems to be only downsides. Startup Fails , you loose - Gets acquired - you loose What is the motivation to perform .

Working on decently cool things with relatively limited bureaucracy.

You can do that at established companies. If the cool thing comes to an end you'll often have a boring job you can keep or stay at while you find something else.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#103

Post by kingforaday »

kentonv wrote: post #99
KaiserPro wrote: post #60

I was aquihired by a FAANG. The headline "startup bought for x million" is almost always a lie, either direct or by omission. First, when a startup is bought, its generally not bought at the headline rate. So if you see a "bought for $45m" that doesn't mean People who own shares all got a % of 45m. That number is normally bullshit, but also a "total package" which include share offers for joining the new company. Thi…

Yeah, I used to hear all the time that "a startup is worth $1 million per engineer in a pure acquihire", but learned the hard way this is a myth. When we were talking to various companies about acquiring Sandstorm.io (my startup) in 2017, one of the companies told me, essentially: "We aren't interested in your IP, only the employees. We'll give you a set of job offers for them. We will then sum up the salary and equi…

Whoa, bummer but interesting. It can be hard to let go. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#104

Post by toomuchtodo »

whiplash451 wrote: post #98

A lot of bias against startups in the comments. These are missing (1) how terrible the working conditions in bigco have become in the meantime (2) truly good startups (they exist) that pay solid base salaries

The odds are clear as day. ~90% of startups fail, and the truly good ones are very rare. Do small pockets of good exist? Yes, absolutely. But most of the startup ecosystem is convincing employees to grind for peanuts until founders and investors (whether that's accelerators or institutional) hit liquidity (if ever). Of course, if you find the unicorn (good comp, target work life balance, meaningful work [to you]), hold on tight and don't mess it up.

https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42828198

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#106

Post by CalChris »

This was just a preference cliff, plain+simple. Windsurf got paid maybe $3B for itself. But the investors and senior management got their cut first. How? Well, the preferences they negotiated.

  No one really knows how the game is played
  The art of the trade
  How the sausage gets made
  We just assume that it happens
  But no one else is in the room where it happens
#2 wasn't in the room when it happened. In a very real sense, he's lucky he got anything. Management owes a fiduciary duty to the shareholders and #2 is a shareholder. But negotiating the $3B covers that duty.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#107

Post by Lionga »

chambers wrote: post #89

https://x.com/ahmaurya/status/1948491614160122308 Garry Tan posted "sounds like a tweet that cost $20M" which he later deleted. Smells like a strong bias against employees in favor of management and founders.

That is YCombinator & Garry Tan for you. Disrupting the screwing over employees (and founders if they can but its just much harder) as a sport.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#108

Post by sundbry »

lokar wrote: post #55
nocoiner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. How did the Windsurf investors feel about that?

They got paid out as well. Meta pulled the same thing recently. So, a new trend where big tech “buys out” a startup in a way that only early VCs, founders and top managers get any value.

Sounds like a breach of fiduciary duty to the common shareholders.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#109

Post by czbond »

chambers wrote: post #89

https://x.com/ahmaurya/status/1948491614160122308 Garry Tan posted "sounds like a tweet that cost $20M" which he later deleted. Smells like a strong bias against employees in favor of management and founders.

I believe Tan's words were mis-represented. I believe he is saying that it cost Prim $20M and he then wrote that post. I don't think he is insinuating anything else.

Re: Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth

#110

Post by rhyperior »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #91

I went through an acquisition very early in my career, and for the longest time I believed it was the best outcome for everyone. Over time, I realized that my naive belief was purely due to the founders going way above and beyond to make sure each and every employee (including folks doing just data entry) got a good outcome (accelerated vesting, significant equity in new company, top of the band pay, etc.). It made m…

They must have had a strong position from which to negotiate those favorable terms, in addition to the experience to know to do so, and the integrity to actually do it. The type of people you should follow.
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