

Here’s What Everybody Made From The Slide Sale - grep
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/heres-what-everybody-made-from-the-slide-sale/

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johnrob
As an employee, you definitely wanted to be at the company when it was
purchased since 48 million was earmarked for the soon to be google employees.

It sucks if you're someone who had left the company recently (especially if
you paid money to secure your options)... there is something rather backhanded
about this kind of dealing. Arrington alluded to it during YC's angel conf,
but from an investor's perspective. In this case it can affect employees as
well.

I suppose this is the nature of private companies. The controlling parties can
really do whatever they want, including diluting you out of the picture or (in
this case) laundering value into employee retention plans.

~~~
dnsworks
Repeat after me,

"I will never make any money beyond a salary working for somebody else. My
only chance at striking it rich is by being a founder in my own company, or
getting lucky in the lottery (or (casino, inheritance, getting run over by
Jason Calcanis' Tesla, etc)."

Every once and a while there's a statistical outlier like Youtube where
employees actually cash out with enough money to feel like they're not poor in
San Francisco. I think Youtube was the last one, in what, 2005?

~~~
sanswork
There are a lot of people in finance making millions outside of their salary
working for other people.

~~~
dnsworks
A lot of meaning what .. 250,000 globally? Maybe 500,000? I doubt many of
those people are hacker news readers.

~~~
sanswork
Compared to how many people are making millions founding technology companies.

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ardit33
Google agreed to dish 48m, in retention bonuses. There about 100 employees, so
that averages about 480,000 per employee. Not sure what the vesting period is,
but assuming it is at least 2 years.

Not bad, but not life changing either. After taxes, you can afford the
downpayment of a Condo in SOMA + a bit more, or buy a small one bedroom in
Mountain View.

Moral of the story, if you want to be rich, start your own startup.

~~~
TotlolRon
> _After taxes, you can afford the downpayment of a Condo in SOMA + a bit
> more, or buy a small one bedroom in Mountain View._

There has to be some other measuring stick to money than real estate...

~~~
mattmaroon
It's better than what USA Today would use. They'd tell you that if you
converted it into pennies and stacked it straight up it would be the third
largest building in the world.

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brown9-2
I still don't understand what Slide does or makes or why a company would be
interested in acquiring them.

Can someone explain this to me in non-hype terms?

What is Google paying for here exactly?

~~~
webwright
Google is getting a bunch of people who get social games (and social software
in general) -- something they've historically been pretty bad at. Of course,
they are buying the (distant) 2nd horse behind Zynga, aren't they?

~~~
dnsworks
I think Playdom is probably a lot larger than Slide... oh hrm and Playdom was
just acquired by Disney for $763M. Slide is definitely small fries in
comparison to Playdom or Zynga.

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grep
Max actually did quite well.

~~~
whakojacko
True, but I'm guessing the lower-level employees not so much after you take
out all the money for the preferred shareholders, even the ones who invested
at crazy valuations.

Edit: Maybe they arent so screwed after all, depending on how the retention
bonuses are dished out.

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vibhavs
"...founder Max Levchin did the best out of the sale, making a comparable sum
to the one he made from PayPal...[for] a total of $39m."

Given that PayPal sold to eBay for $1.5b, doesn't $39m sound too low? Does
anyone know how much he made from PayPal's sale?

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Tycho
I think it was about the same, 30-something million. Peter Theil made about
twice as much from the PayPal sale though.

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mattmaroon
Isn't this highly unusual? Don't preferences usually give later investors the
profits first? Did Fidelity and T Rowe Price really want into Slide so badly
that they were willing to let the earlier investors receive a preference over
them?

It doesn't really make sense to me the way this is broken down. I would have
expected basically everyone to make about 2x their money.

~~~
Raphael
Earliest investors get priority since they took the most risk.

~~~
mattmaroon
While that sounds logical, it typically works the opposite way. In a big
cashout early investors often get the highest ROI because they got in at the
lowest price, but they usually get paid last.

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dnsworks
Sometime in the future I expect to see this same type of posting about Twitter
and Digg.

