
Etsy's Founder, Written Out of History, Is Not Alone - T-A
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-06/etsy-s-founder-written-out-of-history-is-not-alone
======
Rainymood
I feel like Ron Wayne entry in this list is off in so many ways

>Ron Wayne was technically a co-founder of Apple Computer, but he chose to
leave after only 12 days. He paid the price by missing out on millions, if not
billions, when he sold his 10 percent share of the company for $800.

He chose to leave the company himself because he didn't believe (at the time)
that Apple would succeed. That was his choice, he did not get pushed out.
Obviously (in hindsight!) this was a bad mistake, but at the time it was not
and nobody could even imagine the succes apple would turn out to be. Hindsight
is always 20/20 guys.

~~~
616c
All I could think of:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_History)

Larry David is working for an energy-efficient car startup as chief of
marketing, gets fired days before it goes huge for objecting to the name of
first model of the car, Howard, and well, loses out in a huge payout and goes
dark and flees to reinvent himself.

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marincounty
Well since I despise sneaky corporate behavior; I'll give my honest, brief
review of Esty. I was introduced to the site because it was the only site my
sister seemed to like--a few years ago? I looked at it and was immediately
impressed. It reminded me of the annual Fourth of July fair. Where once a year
artisans would sell their crafts(my annual purchase was a hand tooled belt,
with a copper buckle). This was in the late 70's. This company had kinda
recreated that experience. Actually, strike that last sentence. The site
didn't come close to recreating that fair, or level of craftsmanship, but it
was better than Ebay.

Jump ahead a few years. I now can't tell the crap from China and India--from
handmade local works of art, and each month it just gets worse. Good luck with
your IPO--I imagine current management and slick Bankers, along with the usual
list of insiders will make another killing. (I guarantee in a few years you
will want the guy back who had the original vision! "What happened? Why are we
loosing customers to that new site. That new site that has standards? I hope
he makes you guys pay until it hurts.)

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nostrademons
Are they really written out of history? Rob Kalin shows up as the first Google
result for [etsy founder], is listed on the knowledge panel for [etsy], is the
first name mentioned on the Wikipedia article for Etsy, and is mentioned
several times there. Eduardo Saverin had a whole movie made about him, and Ron
Wayne features prominently in Steve Wozniak's autobiography.

~~~
xrange
That's not a real rousing defense. Stalin wasn't able to completely erase
Trotsky from history either:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Sov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union)

...(is there a Soviet version of Godwin's Law? I guess I just invoked it.)

~~~
venomsnake
In the current newscycle world you don't even have to try. Somebody remembers
the shot plane over Ukraine or Ebola? They were a big deal not a few months
ago and suddenly disappeared.

Just stop pushing the PR for something and it will go to obscurity on its own.

~~~
jacquesm
The most popular dutch news site has both on its front page right now
[http://nu.nl/](http://nu.nl/)

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GigabyteCoin
This article is ridiculous.

He was the founder, and obviously (because he is no longer in the picture)
decided to sell or give away enough equity in the company to the point that he
no longer held a controlling interest. Thus he no longer plays any part in the
company's goings on and rightfully so.

That was his decision, and nobody elses.

One has to assume that he was content with it at the time.

If he still held 51% or more of the company and still wished to be a part of
Etsy, he easily could have done so. So could have basically every other
founder in history.

If Steve Jobs knew that Apple would go on to become the most valuable company
in the world one day, and that Mike Markkula was going to vote him out of his
own company a decade later, he probably wouldn't have sold him 30% of the
company for $80,000 either.

Hindsight is 20/20.

~~~
chrisbolt
> This article is ridiculous.

Yes, but not for the reasons you list. The article cites Eduardo Saverin, who
is not at all forgotten thanks to The Social Network. It lists Noah Glass, who
was only involved in Twitter in the early days. It lists Ron Wayne, who was a
Co-Founder of Apple for less than two weeks. It lists founders of Pandora, who
left long before its IPO. And yet one of Etsy's founders, with the company
from 2005 to 2011, is forgotten?

> He was the founder

He was one of three founders [1]

> and [...] decided to sell or give away enough equity in the company to the
> point that he no longer held a controlling interest. Thus he no longer plays
> any part in the company's goings on and rightfully so.

So if you don't control 51% of the company, you don't play ANY part in the
company's goings on?

> If he still held 51% or more of the company and still wished to be a part of
> Etsy, he easily could have done so. So could have basically every other
> founder in history.

How do you 'still' hold 51% of the company with two co-founders?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy#History)

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kordless
> He was quoted in a 2011 Inc. magazine article as saying the idea of
> maximizing shareholder value is "ridiculous."

:)

~~~
wilsynet
It's probably not ridiculous, but the idea is overemphasized and taken as
gospel in America -- and, I think, has been responsible for a lot of bad,
short term decisions over time.

Tim Cook seems to agree with him: “When we work on making our devices
accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI. [Apple works on] a
lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world
better than we found it [...] If you want me to do things only for ROI
reasons, you should get out of this stock.”

Of course it's easier to say this when you're Tim Cook or Larry Page.

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georgyo
I think was is more sad, is that ETSY had 4 founders. Making this article
writing 3 of them out of history.

~~~
2015-03-06
Well, it's not that clear-cut. Kalin raised the first money personally, a good
chunk of it from family, and hired the people to whom he later granted the
title 'co-founder'. They had much, much less equity from day one, and cashed
out in the first rounds of investment.

Also worth noting: there was an interesting Fred Wilson blog post about
dealing with Kalin and his quirks that has since been deleted. The gist of it,
as I recall, was that Kalin saw himself as an 'artist' and not a manager - a
notion Wilson found unsettling for the CEO of a portfolio company.

As for what Rob is up to these days, he's recently bought a warehouse in the
Catskills and is turning it into a hive of artisan workshops with a restaurant
downstairs. Apparently everything in the restaurant (tables, chairs,
silverware, lighting) will be made in the warehouse. So basically, he's
building a Portlandia skit, but apparently he can afford it.

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codewithcheese
While I think this article is a little over dramatic, I think Rob Kalin
probably did fine for himself, and historical account, let alone IPO account,
does not equal personal happiness. To continue the conspiracy theory, Kalin
seems to have previously been listed at the 25th richest under 30 on
complex.com and now replaced by Mr Cullen which just so happens to rhyme with
Kalin. [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/08/the-25-richest-
te...](http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/08/the-25-richest-tech-
entrepreneurs-under-30/rob-kalin)

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wilsynet
The article says that it is unlikely that Kalim has a significant equity
position in Etsy because he is not listed amongst the principal shareholders
in the S-1.

The definition of principal shareholder here is: officer of the company,
director on the board, or representing 5% or more equity stake.

Thus, Kalin could have as much as 4.99% of Etsy and still not be listed.

I would guess that Kalin has a significant equity stake in Etsy. It has no
doubt seen dilution over time, but if I were a betting man, I would bet that
unless he has already sold his shares in the secondary markets, his net worth
will be a princely sum indeed.

~~~
kjs3
Technically, he could have 5% - 1 share and not be listed. But otherwise I
agree with your assessment. He's not missing any meals.

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BadassFractal
Do these guys somehow manage to lose their equity despite having vested all of
it within the first 4+ years?

~~~
baudehlo
You still have to pay for vested stock if you quit before an exercise event.
I'm not saying he didn't do that, but it's hard for a lot of people to come up
with that cash.

~~~
shalmanese
If he were a founder, then his options would have a nominal strike price and
it wouldn't have been a financial hit for him to vest them.

~~~
nemo44x
You forget about taxes. By the time of exit the fair market value of the stock
likely greatly exceeds option grant strikes to founders creating a massive tax
liability in the form of capital gains. Likely in the hundreds of thousands if
not millions of dollars range.

~~~
zwily
I believe that most founders exercise early when the company is formed and do
an 83b. It's the smart thing to do, anyway.

~~~
nemo44x
Yes that's an option if they planned well. But there still may be spread.

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thrownaway2424
Meta:

This Bloomberg site is unique or, at least, among a tiny set of sites that has
a fixed top banner and manages to page down/page up correctly. I spent several
minutes just appreciating their implementation with my keyboard. Both page
down and space bar work correctly and the progress marker in the header is
nifty.

~~~
mattmanser
I personally find the progress bar very distracting and don't read Bloomberg
articles any more because of it.

It's something to do with me always using mouse scrolling that jerks the
screen by set increments, and that then animates the bar but it takes 250 ms
or something, so I scroll, my eyes attempt to find the new position in the
article, the bar animates, my eye gets drawn up to the bar instead.

It's so bad for me I find myself angry and frustrated whenever I read a
Bloomberg article and it took me a while to realise it was something as simple
and silly as a visuay distracting automated progress bar that is just a bit
too slow to animate.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I didn't know they had a fixed header. _pats NoScript on the head_.

