4 ms·

Almost certainly an amount that wipes out common stock holders. People they want to keep will get a retention offer, but with the acknowledgment that their stoc

Almost certainly an amount that wipes out common stock holders. People they want to keep will get a retention offer, but with the acknowledgment that their stock in Chariot is now worth $0.

sjg007 10y ago
Why? The app and logistics software might be worth it. That being said a purchase for $30m may have been announced. It will be interesting to see how the vanpool model can scale... Clearly too many cars on the roads and not necessarily needed for the day to day commutes.
- webtechgal 10y ago
  > a purchase for $30m may have been announced. I was wild-guessing around the same ballpark too. Here is some simple math I was thinking: $3M round (a year ago) would have valued them around $10M. Since then, then would probably have doubled or tripled their valuation, getting them to $20M to 30M at this point.
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    Why does a $3M round automatically mean a doubling or tripling of their valuation after the fact? Doesn't it matter what they DID with the money? Is it just assumed their sales doubled or tripled and that they hired the right people?
- JonFish85 10y ago
  My thinking: 1) If they were doing well and got a $30m buyout offer, they'd probably have gone out to raise more money for a much higher valuation. Money is cheap, and if they have an offer in that range, a VC would probably cut them a check within an hour. 2) Buyouts generally benefit founders & investors, and common stock holders don't get much. They'll get a retention bonus or something depending on how important they are deemed, but other than that, unlikely that they'll walk away with what their on-paper ownership seemed to be worth. I'm fairly jaded on this mostly from having watched friends get giddy about their company being acquired, then getting their paperwork and realizing that their stock is now worth $0, and if they want their $100k bonus, it's distributed in a back-loaded earn-out over 4 years (sometimes with conditions that they hit certain targets that aren't realistic). I've seen it happen (again, to friends/acquaintances) in most price points (~$5m, ~$50m and ~$100m), unfortunately. Granted it's anecdotal, so I could be very wrong! But in general I think common shareholders are wiped out.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Good post. Everyone on HN should remember that even if you are lucky enough to work as an early employee for a startup that got acquired, you shouldn't expect anything. That makes the normal tradeoff that's asked of early startup employees make even less sense than it already made (no sense). It seems the real way to get a payday is to bootstrap a consultancy, build it up over a few years, and save your money. Eventually, you can transition to a product company if you're still interested in that. This is what Fog Creek, 37Signals, and several other prominent companies did. You can do stuff your way, on your terms, and make products the way you want without meddling VCs jumping down your throat. You can get paid as quickly as you can get clients and no one will be yelling at you for paying yourself more than $50k or working less than 70 hours per week. I would implore all the devs currently in the startup rat race in SV to consider this as a reasonable alternative option. The people who get mind-blowingly rich in these transactions are primarily the investors, sometimes the founders, and only exceptionally rarely any of the employees.
birken 10y ago
First of all, the story doesn't mention anything about the size of the deal. Second of all, the company is selling after ~2 years. The average employee has probably been there for less than 1 year. Excluding the common stock of the founders (since they are the ones who made the decision to sell), employee common stock grants and common stock options are all about ensuring employees get a share of blockbuster company results, like IPOs or 8/9 figure acquisitions. In the case of smaller acquisitions (of which this might have been or might not have been), stock options are probably not worth very much because the company hasn't grown that much. Nobody is at fault, nobody got screwed, its just how stock works. That is why employees are paid salaries. This is why employees often get generous retention offers from the acquiring company. Nobody is being "wiped out" because that assumes there was inherent value to begin with, which there isn't.
- JonFish85 10y ago
  I'm not saying anyone got screwed, I'm saying that common stock probably is worth $0 (for similar reasons: quick exit, not much time to really build value, etc). "Generous retention" can vary drastically. The reason I mention it is because it's easy to get sucked into the trap of "hey they exited for $30m, and the person who gave up $40k/year salary for 2% ownership just got a check for $600k!" when that simply isn't realistic. Unless everything goes exactly right, common stock isn't really worth the risk. I think it's an important distinction to make. Again, not saying anyone got "screwed", just that even in this case, an 8-figure exit could very well mean no common stock holders got a dime. I'm very curious about the terms of the Cruise deal as well -- a 10 figure exit (!), but I'm interested to find out how much the common stock there was actually worth.
- serge2k 10y ago
  That's fine. I am assuming all these employees were paid good market salaries as well right?
- ben_jones 10y ago
  YC validates that a company might be worth a lot one day. Employees factor this into their decisions both to join a company and in salary negotiation. Everyone knows this and anything less then full acknowledgement of the fact is complete chickenshit. To then turn around on a YC forum and say "It is completely fair that employees come out of a $MM acquisition with the skin on their backs" is equally chickenshit. Until startups stop banking on the marketing of equity to employees I'm always going to advocate for said employees.

Almost certainly an amount that wipes out common stock holders. People they want to keep will get a retention offer, but with the acknowledgment that their stock in Chariot is now worth $0.

sjg007 10y ago

Why? The app and logistics software might be worth it. That being said a purchase for $30m may have been announced. It will be interesting to see how the vanpool model can scale... Clearly too many cars on the roads and not necessarily needed for the day to day commutes.

webtechgal 10y ago
> a purchase for $30m may have been announced. I was wild-guessing around the same ballpark too. Here is some simple math I was thinking: $3M round (a year ago) would have valued them around $10M. Since then, then would probably have doubled or tripled their valuation, getting them to $20M to 30M at this point.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  Why does a $3M round automatically mean a doubling or tripling of their valuation after the fact? Doesn't it matter what they DID with the money? Is it just assumed their sales doubled or tripled and that they hired the right people?
JonFish85 10y ago
My thinking: 1) If they were doing well and got a $30m buyout offer, they'd probably have gone out to raise more money for a much higher valuation. Money is cheap, and if they have an offer in that range, a VC would probably cut them a check within an hour. 2) Buyouts generally benefit founders & investors, and common stock holders don't get much. They'll get a retention bonus or something depending on how important they are deemed, but other than that, unlikely that they'll walk away with what their on-paper ownership seemed to be worth. I'm fairly jaded on this mostly from having watched friends get giddy about their company being acquired, then getting their paperwork and realizing that their stock is now worth $0, and if they want their $100k bonus, it's distributed in a back-loaded earn-out over 4 years (sometimes with conditions that they hit certain targets that aren't realistic). I've seen it happen (again, to friends/acquaintances) in most price points (~$5m, ~$50m and ~$100m), unfortunately. Granted it's anecdotal, so I could be very wrong! But in general I think common shareholders are wiped out.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Good post. Everyone on HN should remember that even if you are lucky enough to work as an early employee for a startup that got acquired, you shouldn't expect anything. That makes the normal tradeoff that's asked of early startup employees make even less sense than it already made (no sense). It seems the real way to get a payday is to bootstrap a consultancy, build it up over a few years, and save your money. Eventually, you can transition to a product company if you're still interested in that. This is what Fog Creek, 37Signals, and several other prominent companies did. You can do stuff your way, on your terms, and make products the way you want without meddling VCs jumping down your throat. You can get paid as quickly as you can get clients and no one will be yelling at you for paying yourself more than $50k or working less than 70 hours per week. I would implore all the devs currently in the startup rat race in SV to consider this as a reasonable alternative option. The people who get mind-blowingly rich in these transactions are primarily the investors, sometimes the founders, and only exceptionally rarely any of the employees.

birken 10y ago

First of all, the story doesn't mention anything about the size of the deal. Second of all, the company is selling after ~2 years. The average employee has probably been there for less than 1 year. Excluding the common stock of the founders (since they are the ones who made the decision to sell), employee common stock grants and common stock options are all about ensuring employees get a share of blockbuster company results, like IPOs or 8/9 figure acquisitions. In the case of smaller acquisitions (of which this might have been or might not have been), stock options are probably not worth very much because the company hasn't grown that much. Nobody is at fault, nobody got screwed, its just how stock works. That is why employees are paid salaries. This is why employees often get generous retention offers from the acquiring company. Nobody is being "wiped out" because that assumes there was inherent value to begin with, which there isn't.

JonFish85 10y ago
I'm not saying anyone got screwed, I'm saying that common stock probably is worth $0 (for similar reasons: quick exit, not much time to really build value, etc). "Generous retention" can vary drastically. The reason I mention it is because it's easy to get sucked into the trap of "hey they exited for $30m, and the person who gave up $40k/year salary for 2% ownership just got a check for $600k!" when that simply isn't realistic. Unless everything goes exactly right, common stock isn't really worth the risk. I think it's an important distinction to make. Again, not saying anyone got "screwed", just that even in this case, an 8-figure exit could very well mean no common stock holders got a dime. I'm very curious about the terms of the Cruise deal as well -- a 10 figure exit (!), but I'm interested to find out how much the common stock there was actually worth.
serge2k 10y ago
That's fine. I am assuming all these employees were paid good market salaries as well right?
ben_jones 10y ago
YC validates that a company might be worth a lot one day. Employees factor this into their decisions both to join a company and in salary negotiation. Everyone knows this and anything less then full acknowledgement of the fact is complete chickenshit. To then turn around on a YC forum and say "It is completely fair that employees come out of a $MM acquisition with the skin on their backs" is equally chickenshit. Until startups stop banking on the marketing of equity to employees I'm always going to advocate for said employees.