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Who Owns Nebula?

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Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#91

Post by singleshot_ »

danpalmer wrote: post #20
wodenokoto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about American coop laws, but in Denmark there are diary companies owned by farmers (nearly 10.000 farmers own Arla) and Coop Amba, which owns many super market chains have over 2 million members, that each have a voting right in the company. You can totally scale this type of ownership.

I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is that partnerships are very different legal entities to a typical US LLC. I believe a partnership is typically in many ways closer to what I suggested may be the case with Nebula – where the company has bylaws and contracts in place internally to make this work. On the other hand for an LLC, LTD, or other similar types of company, being a shareholder is a more pu…

I would be very surprised if there were reporting rules about being a shareholder in an LLC.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#92

Post by singleshot_ »

derefr wrote: post #11
moi2388 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might very well be the case. It would probably be more honest to give the content creators stocks or say “partly ran by content creators” instead of “owned by content creators” in this case, no?

The problem with that is that if you truly own something, you have the right to sell that thing, and nobody can say who you can sell it to . Give it six months and it wouldn’t be “creator-owned” any more, due to cash-strapped creators dumping stock for a payday. A co-op is structurally as much about ensuring that employees can’t transfer their equity to non-employees as it is about ensuring that employees have equity…

This is not correct, of course; you might very well own something without the right to sell it. Immediately cognizable examples are your liver, stock options before maturation, a house that is part of your bankruptcy estate, shares in a company during a lockup period, your mom's wedding ring that your sister would strangle you if you sold, dangerous munitions that you cannot sell to Russians, etc.

Ownership is a bundle of rights that is not uniform across property or time.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#93

Post by singleshot_ »

derefr wrote: post #70
danpalmer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be the ultimate version of "ownership" but it's by no means the only useful version. Startups typically issue shares or options but restrict selling of them. Does that mean you don't own them? Well it's complicated, but in my opinion it's far more useful to say that yes you do own them than no you don't. I as an employee of a public company receive compensation in the form of shares, but I'm only allowed t…

Ownership of private property (abstract or concrete) is a formal, legally-defined concept — and "do you have essentially sovereign authority over the disposition of the asset" is always at the core of it. No, you don't own stock when you own stock options. A stock option is a right to purchase stock at a particular price , and you own that right . Just like owning, say, an easement on a piece of land, doesn't mean yo…

"You don't pay taxes when you acquire options, because you haven't yet acquired ownership over anything."

Many people do, in fact, pay taxes when they acquire options. You seem to be saying that people who have filed an 83(b) election own options, but people who haven't don't. This is not correct.

In general, your error appears to be that you either own something or you do not. This is not generally how proprietary rights work.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#94

Post by LammyL »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #67
LammyL wrote: post #16

This corporate structure seems a bit sketchy for creators if the platform wants to sell. If they sell Nebula then creators split half of the profits. If they sell Standard then creators get nothing.

Why would Standard get sold though? The value to a buyer is nebula. In fact perhaps they intentionally structured things so as to detach Nebula from Standard to make it easier to spin off.

It sounds like standard is just a holding company for Nebula to add a layer of protection in the ownership structure.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#95

Post by MichaelZuo »

jasode wrote: post #54
jszymborski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you can't take on equity funding, only debt. Is this a huge problem?

>Is this a huge problem? It depends on what the company is trying to build. The dollar amount of debt a company can take is limited by its revenue because it requires ongoing payments to service that debt. Whether it's debt from a bank business loan or by issuing corporate bonds, they both require real revenue to make those payments. Equity investments don't have a ceiling capped by the company's present day earnings…

So then how could it remain a co-op?

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#96

Post by MichaelZuo »

Tarq0n wrote: post #42
ehhthing wrote: post #9

I think the last few paragraphs go off the rails. If creators didn't own (at least in some way) some controlling stake in Nebula, why would they publicly say that they do? Moreover, why would creators join Nebula if the terms were not beneficial to them in the first place? I find it funny that the author writes > It’s equally possible, however, that the system was set up in order to keep any meaningful power away fro…

The creators are desperate for a hedge against Youtube, which unilaterally controls their compensation and can deplatform them at any time.

I thought Patreon was already a “hedge against Youtube”?

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#97

Post by gverrilla »

blagie wrote: post #87
kragen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm disappointed in brian mcmanus every time i watch a 'real engineering' video and find out that it's full of factual inaccuracies, like all the previous 'real engineering' videos i watched. you'd think i'd learn, but i keep confusing him with 'practical engineering', which is actually real

I find Real Engineering to be pretty good for aerospace, and horrible for everything else. There are errors, but no more so than any other resources I've seen on aerospace. The problem I have is that it's trying to do electronic engineering, fusion, and now history. The worst is interviews / human interest / travel / behind-the-scenes, etc. My question is always: Why? Why do you think you're at all qualified to do a…

> and now history

I told him not to that unless he has actual knowledge, and he got very angry at me. On the occasion he made a very poor analysis of political and social situation of an African country (that's all I remember).

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#98

Post by magnetowasright »

A lot of weird, strongly held, strangely inflammatorily worded takes with exactly no apparent evidence. I'm not sure why Nebula upsets this person sufficiently to write ...that.

I usually enjoy an unnecessarily inflammatory hit piece on something uncontroversial because it's the investigation along the way that makes things interesting but there's none of that.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#99

Post by gautampk »

prithvi24 wrote: post #10
gautampk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It /is/ misleading to say or imply that it is a co-op, though. It isn’t. It may be a progressive company which provides very favourable terms to creators, but it isn’t a co-op.

Yeah, I see your point—it might be misleading to label Nebula as a co-op since it technically isn't one. But I think what's important is how much Nebula does to empower creators compared to other platforms. The founders are creators who've invested a lot to make it a place where content makers get more support and a bigger share of the revenue. Even if it's not a co-op, it still feels like a step in the right directi…

Fully agree that it’s a step in the right direction. The thing that gives me pause is essentially ‘if they want to be a co-op, why aren’t they just a co-op’?

I appreciate that in a full co-op dilution is a concern if they need external investors (e.g., Curiosity Stream) but you could have a structure with 50% co-op ownership and 50% capital ownership, so dilution as the platform expands would only affect the other co-operative owners.

Re: Who Owns Nebula?

#100

Post by kragen »

gverrilla wrote: post #97
blagie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Real Engineering to be pretty good for aerospace, and horrible for everything else. There are errors, but no more so than any other resources I've seen on aerospace. The problem I have is that it's trying to do electronic engineering, fusion, and now history. The worst is interviews / human interest / travel / behind-the-scenes, etc. My question is always: Why? Why do you think you're at all qualified to do a…

> and now history I told him not to that unless he has actual knowledge, and he got very angry at me. On the occasion he made a very poor analysis of political and social situation of an African country (that's all I remember).

maybe he has personality problems that make it hard for him to interact with people more knowledgeable than himself; that would explain why his videos are so filled with errors stated with absolute conviction
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