
How Chris Sacca And J.P. Morgan Acquired 10% Of Twitter - Cmccann7
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/27/jp-morgan-twitter-chris-sacca-10-percent-secondary/
======
jonknee
It's a good time to reflect on what a coup the split from Odeo was. According
to the article, Ev has more than $400m in Twitter equity plus at least $100m
in cash... Lot of coin.

Odeo was VC backed wasn't going anywhere for a number of reasons, namely
iTunes beating them to the podcast game. It did launch a side project called
twttr though, which back then was an SMS focused app. Shortly after Ev bought
out the investors in Odeo, spun twttr off to a new company and then sold Odeo
which has still never done anything remarkable. Odeo's sale price was
something like a million bucks, compared to Twitter's current $4.5b valuation.
Talk about identifying and keeping the gems.

~~~
tonystubblebine
As one of the investors said at the time, "He's either going to be remembered
as an idiot or as a genius."

The thing is, I don't think even he knew which way it was going to go until
after the Summize acquisition two years later.

Twitter always seemed like a worthwhile project, but those first two years
were really hard for everyone and from the outside it looked like they might
just completely fail to keep up with the growth.

------
marcamillion
Uhh...am I the only one doing a double take at the fact that Chris Sacca has
raised a $1+B fund ?

When did that happen ? How did I miss that ?

That's pretty...errr...frothy...and epic.

I never knew he packed that sorta heat. Congrats to him...but now he has the
wonderful task of actually putting so much money to work.

I would love to be getting his 2% right now.

~~~
nostrademons
Also a double-take on Evan Williams cashing out $100M of his personal shares.

That's a _big_ cash-out for a company that's not even public yet. Max
Levchin's share of PayPal, which IPO'd and then was bought for $1.5B, was only
estimated at around $40M.

~~~
byrneseyeview
The "Paypal Mafia" people all got <$50mm payouts. That's part of why they
advocate for higher founder ownership--so the folks they fund (or work with)
won't make the same mistake.

And the cashing-out environment has completely changed. It's harder to go
public, but easier to cash out without going public. It's tough to get
anything out of the comparison, other than "Boy, things have changed!"

------
moe
Wow, $4.5 billion valuation. What was their business model again?

~~~
axod
Riding on top of the bubble for as long as they can I believe.

------
vamsee
Given the rocketing valuations, my guess is a good part of the investors are
eyeing a buyout by the likes of Google/Fb rather than wait around until
IPO/profits.

------
ebaysucks
Last time the printed money went into real estate => RE bubble.

This time the printed money goes into tech startups => tech bubble.

------
ajhit406
chris sacca was born in buffalo, ny

in 2009, chris rode a bicycle across the US

buffalo...

------
JacobIrwin
Both finance and tech startup-related article. +1.

I thought I'd mention Sharespost. Its a good source to buy premarket stocks.
They allow for shareholders (often internal stakeholders) to put their shares
up for sale before IPO. Currently, Facebook and Linkedin are up for grabs. I
found an interesting article on Linkedin's IPO earlier today. I'll start it in
a new thread here in Hacker News.

~~~
JacobIrwin
(I am not a rep for Sharespost - thought some of you would like to know about
it)

