StabilityAI cofounder says CEO tricked him into selling stake for $100

Post by hgsgm » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:27 AM UTC

takinola wrote: post #27

JohnFen wrote: post #22

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It was misplaced trust. That's a really easy mistake to make until you've been burned by it. I'll bet that person won't make that mistake a second time. But better is to avoid swimming with the sharks at all. I have a wonderful horror story about a business deal I made where I was cheated out of about $5 mil. I didn't trust the party I was doing the deal with, so the contract negotiations took most of a year and the…

I feel like the story of the scorpion and the frog applies here. My solution is to try very, very hard not to engage with people I do not trust. My mantra is "good people do good things, bad people do bad things". If you don't want bad things to happen to you, stay away from people you know to be bad regardless of how tempting it may be to associate with them.

Post by hgsgm » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:29 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #85

wongarsu wrote: post #68

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Zuckerberg (and a small group of other Meta shareholders) hold shares that have 10x as much voting power as normal shares. He has about 90% of those special shares, giving him a solid majority in most matters. Some other companies like Lyft or Alphabet have similar structures, but it is very unusual.

I'm actually surprised it's not more common. If I buy meta stock I have zero expectation of being able to sway company decisions. I just care that if they make money I make money.

Post by SnowHill9902 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:47 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #139

cj wrote: post #42

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Simple answer: A successful founder will sell 1 (maybe 2) companies in their lifetime, while PE/VC firms do these deals every day of the week. It's like entering the ring with a pro MMA fighter and expecting to have a fair fight. You have a massive disadvantage that can't be overcome. The best you can do is take precautions and "do your best" but "your best" and "precautions" still isn't good enough if your opponent…

> The buyer usually waits until the very last minute, then drops the bomb on the seller "Btw, we can't do the deal anymore at this price, but we can sign tomorrow for 30% less". The sad part is it's such a common tactic and PE firms will do things like encourage founders to get their whole team excited about the transaction -before- dropping the bomb / new deal terms. At which point the founder is basically trapped w…

Post by fsckboy » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

Infernal wrote: post #91

kmeisthax wrote: post #83

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One other advantage of buying family run bootstrapped businesses is that they're too small to trip antitrust scrutiny. There are entire industries whose driving consolidation force is a handful of PE firms buying up old family businesses and running them into the ground. Things like funeral homes, dental offices, and the like. Yes, I did learn about this from Cory Doctorow, why do you ask?

Links? I’d love to read more.

Post by ShamelessC » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

ansk wrote: post #86

ivalm wrote: post #63

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The loose association was with decent researchers, no need to bring them down. I do agree about the rest.

Mediocre in regard to the standard set by other research teams pulling $1B+ valuations. The OpenAI founding team and the recently announced team at xAI are what I would consider to be exceptionally strong groups. Adept, Anthropic, Inflection, and character.ai are also strong. Look at the track records and accolades of researchers at these groups. Ilya Sutskever alone has more research experience than the combined tea…