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Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

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Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#101

Post by true_religion »

XCabbage wrote: post #63
crmd wrote: post #44

20+ years in tech and finance and I still can’t believe liquidation preferences are legal. Even among shareholders, a group of insiders in a conference room can self-deal to keep all the money for themselves and screw common stockholders who had no representation in that room.

Liquidation preferences that merely guarantee you get back the cash you put in before anyone else gets anything are a perfectly reasonable protection for investors. Otherwise, the risk is investors put in $1m for 10% of the company, only for the founder-CEO to decide a month later - perhaps totally genuinely and honestly after initial R&D - that the entire business plan wasn't viable after all and the best thing for…

I wouldn’t mind liquidation preferences with a multiplier so long as they are served after the 1x preferences. That way someone can’t come in and reap 900k on a 100k investment while the rest of the shareholders walk away with 1/10th of their investment.

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#102

Post by nradov »

ponector wrote: post #100
nradov wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There was a story a year or two ago about exit where company was sold for $350m but all employees for nothing, even the founders.

OK, so what? Were any contracts violated?

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#103

Post by [deleted] »

QuercusMax wrote: post #70
grubbs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Started ozempic over a year ago. I can do like one beer per social outing these days.

Is that because ozempic has reduced your tolerance, or because your tolerance has reduced due to less consumption in general?

[deleted]

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#104

Post by lbreakjai »

QuercusMax wrote: post #70
grubbs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Started ozempic over a year ago. I can do like one beer per social outing these days.

Is that because ozempic has reduced your tolerance, or because your tolerance has reduced due to less consumption in general?

Not the original commenter, but for me, I just .. don't feel like it anymore. I used to be a rum enthusiast, now I've got two very nice bottles I bought myself just as I started ozempic, that are still unopened one year after.

It has the same appeal as room temperature water when you're not necessarily thirsty.

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#105

Post by charcircuit »

mikkupikku wrote: post #84
charcircuit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still illegal in the US too.

Federally but the feds don't enforce it. And it being legal in so many states has made it broadly available to anybody that wants it, one road trip to another state is very easy and almost seems normal compared to needing to know a "dealer."

It is not legal in any states. The laws that make it "legal" are unconstitutional (Supremacy Clause).

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#106

Post by mikkupikku »

charcircuit wrote: post #105
mikkupikku wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federally but the feds don't enforce it. And it being legal in so many states has made it broadly available to anybody that wants it, one road trip to another state is very easy and almost seems normal compared to needing to know a "dealer."

It is not legal in any states. The laws that make it "legal" are unconstitutional (Supremacy Clause).

The map is not the terrain.

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#107

Post by ericmay »

roughly wrote: post #94
ericmay wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, just like all of those people who put their money into Brewdog and then got nothing for it Just like anyone who puts their money into an investment that fails... Stocks go up, stocks go down. I don't recall the exact details of the Brewdog investment scheme but some people losing their hat here is just a normal thing that happens in capital markets, otherwise investing wouldn't work. There's a reason that th…

Neither George Carlin nor I am saying that the average person cannot invest in companies, nor that they should not be able to (well, I'm not, at least). We are both saying that the rules and conditions under which you and I invest in companies and the market are substantially different than those in which the ultrawealthy invest in the market, and ours carry both higher risks and more onerous terms. You can argue wha…

Nobody is on a level playing field, nor should they be.

> and ours carry both higher risks and more onerous terms

Can you speak to your experience in investing? I’ve invested in both public and private market deals. There’s nothing safer in my mind than low-cost index funds which are as accessible as running water for all Americans. $1 and a Robinhood account or something are all you need. Granted you can get higher returns of course in private markets but to suggest in general that they are both less risky and higher returning sounds inaccurate to me.

I’m not trying to discredit your underlying point, the ultra wealthy do have access to better terms. They have more capital to deploy - it provides similar scaling discounts to other volume-based businesses.

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#108

Post by FreakLegion »

ponector wrote: post #100
nradov wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There was a story a year or two ago about exit where company was sold for $350m but all employees for nothing, even the founders.

Happens all the time and doesn't mean anyone got screwed. A couple years ago Lacework sold to Fortinet for around $200m. That sounds like a nice exit for everyone, right? But this was after they'd raised $1.8b at a valuation north of $8b, which, ouch. When founders and employees fail this completely, yeah, their equity is going to zero.

Of course there are other cases where people do get genuinely screwed. My point is only that the cash value of an exit, even when it's a big number like $350m, doesn't tell you much.

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#109

Post by rcxdude »

roughly wrote: post #87
derriz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No equity holders got anything out of the liquidation - whether big or small [1]. Preference shares are just as worthless as common stock if there isn’t enough money to cover debt, tax bills, employee statuary entitlements/outstanding pay, bank loans, etc. [1] https://littlelaw.co.uk/p/the-1-billion-brewdog-deal-that-le...

> No equity holders got anything out of the liquidation - whether big or small This statement is not supported by the link you posted, nor any other reporting I've seen on the matter. What I have seen is that TSG is senior to all of the other equity holders, so if there's money to be had, they're getting it before the small holders. Also from your link: > TSG was promised an 18% compound return on its investment (whi…

Yeah, but TSG paid in 213 million and is (at max, assuming there are no creditors to pay, which seems unlikely) getting 33 million out. That's them cutting their losses, not making a profit. They could be getting about 15% of their money back instead of zero, but either way they aren't winning here, just losing slightly less hard than everyone else (though it sounds like the founders made out pretty well). (and realistically, it was probably obviously a very risky bet if the company was not able to get a better deal: these kinds of deals are generally a sign that things are already bad and getting worse, and someone is hoping to try to pull something from the wreckage: the deal obviously meant that if brewdog did manage to turn things around, the value would largely be sucked up by the preferred investors).

Re: Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal

#110

Post by nunez »

newsclues wrote: post #80
marcosdumay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "we invented this really cool product, but minimum production batch is 5000 unities and we need money for the tooling investment" is the right way to use crowdfunding. People get the product, or the company missed something and goes bankrupt. The "I have a software proof of concept, but I need money to make it usable" is also a good way, with a lot more certainty of outcome, but it's one that doesn't strictly req…

I always wanted “The Pilot Bay” where you could download a pilot episode or concept trailer for a movie and crowdfund it for public release

That would be cool! This is how the Veronica Mars movie got made.
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