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Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
71–80 of 117 posts
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#72> Both apps have been downloaded just over 1,000 times on the Google Play Store.
The company had raised about $20 million in 2020.
$20K per free app download?
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valuable to new investors. Old investors get hosed. I really struggle with these sorts of situations. She’s presumably doing something similar with the new company so all the old investors who didn’t participate (presuming a pay to play) get hosed. Is that really fair?
In my experience, the alternative to a pay to play or similar situation in which the old investors get hosed is the company dying, so they get hosed anyway. The fact is, a messed up cap table or zombie company is not attractive to new investors, so cleaning it up is an unfortunate necessity.
IMO the investors deserve a fair price for her 'buying' her old trash. I assume they won't get it and she'll be able to buy her old trash for pennies, probably 100 of them.
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#74Another whiff of 2001. I wonder if they will remove all the copper wiring and toilet paper from the office before they vanish?
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ostensibly, it is in what you left out of your question? If you can buy the assets, specifically, you can not buy the liabilities. Obviously, getting some people off of obligation lists is one of them. There could be others?
Is it not illegal in the US to break up a company to isolate liabilities?
It's not illegal just (possibly) shady, but there are ways to link the former company's liabilities to the purchaser in some situations in some jurisdictions. That may apply here but that's for a whole court to decide.
https://kddk.com/2015/07/30/successor-liability-in-the-purch...
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#76The eternal sunshine of the spotless start-up. Mayer's track record is good enough that she's able to attract new investors easily enough but I wonder if they actually expect a return or if they see it as a lottery ticket.
I think VCs see those things as one :)
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting rid of editors happened at the same time as shorter deadlines. I'm sympathetic.
[dead]
Hilarious! My son is taking Honors English in the 10th grade and I am constantly finding those kinds of mistakes in his writing assignments because he gets distracted by his phone a lot. He also adds a lot of extra sentences that say nothing of value, which I remove. I guess I'm his editor.
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, the alternative to a pay to play or similar situation in which the old investors get hosed is the company dying, so they get hosed anyway. The fact is, a messed up cap table or zombie company is not attractive to new investors, so cleaning it up is an unfortunate necessity.
IMO the investors deserve a fair price for her 'buying' her old trash. I assume they won't get it and she'll be able to buy her old trash for pennies, probably 100 of them.
A typical startup would require the consent of a majority of the investor shares for a sale of all the assets, so there would be investor protection and consent to this type of a transaction.
And indeed this article says “Almost all of Sunshine’s investors, who include Norwest Venture Partners, Felicis Partners, and SV Angel, have signed off on the deal, Wired cited the sources as saying.”
So the investors think whatever is happening is a fair deal.
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#79A lot of misunderstanding here about "why would you invest in someone who has failed?"
An investor is a gambler. Not just on past success, although I'm sure Marissa has had some successes even if people don't know them.
They gamble on: 1) Has this person got the experience (good or bad) to run a business. A failed business leader is a better gamble than someone with no experience. 2) Does this person have a strong network so they can realistically pull in some really good people? 3) Has this person raised capital before? 4) Do they have a convincing narrative about why they have failed and what they might do differently? 5) Is the potential ROI high? 6) Do I have anything else I could invest in instead with better odds?
If I think as an Investor and not as an Engineer, I am not surprised that she has succeeded and I wish her all the best.
Re: Marissa Mayer will close her old AI startup, sell assets to her new AI startup
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clean cap table and she probably provided a decent amount of the funding for the first startup. It's also more than likely a tax thing here. I don't think people ought to get too obsessed with the contractual details on this one.
If she has any investors with preferences, she probably isn’t seeing a dime.
She has a lot of dimes already