"Fun" is being a relatively new hire at a startup and, about two months into realizing that the little place is a dysfunctional train-wreck whose core technology is little more than some crappy UI wrapped around an even crappier XML processor (which the company didn't even write!), being called into the offices of a couple of the corporate VCs and being grilled on how things "actually were".
So I told 'em: Disfunctional this, hollow shell of technology that, engineering practices that involved trading floppy disks of source code and doing builds by hand.
I think they knew. There was little shock. Memo: If you're a hardware company with little experience in software, don't invest in software you know nothing about.
I don't know why the funding wasn't yanked. Perhaps it's because it was 1999, the start-up was buzzword compliant, and although there were ominous creaking sounds, the first bubble hadn't popped.
"Tag along clauses ... to prevent them from blocking acquisitions ..."
I think you mean 'drag-along' rather than 'tag-along'.
Tag-along clauses give minority shareholders the right (but not the obligation) to join a deal negotiated by majority shareholders. Their intention is to prevent minority shareholders from being screwed.
Drag-along clauses give majority shareholders the right to force minority shareholders to participate in a deal. Their intention is to prevent minority shareholders from blocking a deal.
In practice, many agreements include both tag-along and drag-along. The parties assume that the majority shareholder does the deal on behalf of all the others.
So I told 'em: Disfunctional this, hollow shell of technology that, engineering practices that involved trading floppy disks of source code and doing builds by hand.
I think they knew. There was little shock. Memo: If you're a hardware company with little experience in software, don't invest in software you know nothing about.
I don't know why the funding wasn't yanked. Perhaps it's because it was 1999, the start-up was buzzword compliant, and although there were ominous creaking sounds, the first bubble hadn't popped.