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Juno Drivers ‘Gett’ Only Pennies Following $200M Acquisition
- beaconstudios 9y agoat what point do we stop calling these companies "ridesharing"? The idea of ridesharing and the sharing economy seems completely incompatible with Uber, Lyft and friends, who are all basically private car hire firms.
- qeternity 9y agoWelcome to the "gig economy"
- notatoad 9y ago"ridesharing" is just one of those words now, it doesn't mean "ride sharing", it means a private car hire firm. I wouldn't expect that to change.
- pavlov 9y agoI keep waiting for pimps to rebrand their business as "body sharing".
- vuln 9y agoThere are 'Professional Cuddlers' $80-100/hr.
- mseebach 9y agoGreat example, because euphemisms were certainly never a thing in prostitution (and the word you're looking for is 'escort').
- pavlov 9y agoI'm not sure what you're trying to say with the sarcasm. The entire point of the joke was that using counterfactual euphemisms like "ridesharing" is a sign of an industry that's on shaky legal ground -- and "escort" is indeed the textbook example. Thanks for explaining the joke, I guess?
- jlebrech 9y agothe only true ridesharing apps are for longer distances such as blablacar.
- nkrisc 9y agoWe should have stopped a long time ago. There's no sharing going on other than me sharing my money with them and in return them sharing a ride. It's like calling a grocery store a "food sharing" company.
- ithinkinstereo 9y agoIt's increasingly turning to "share-driving" (ala Sharecropping), especially with the predatory leasing programs being offered by Uber/Lyft. Get your side-hustle on!
- j_s 9y agoIn case anyone isn't aware of the details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764994 a year after they started the program they changed which cars were considered "black" cars and this guys Lexus?? Was no longer a black car. They said it couldn't exclusively be used for black and had to pick up Uber X riders as well. Uber x pays a lot less. The people this happened to were basically bait and switched when Travis changed the terms on them. [...] They cut rates and required you to pick up cheaper fairs and you're underwater.
- bdefore 9y agoshame they weren't bought by Verizon. then we'd get 'unlimited ridesharing'.
- akgerber 9y agoI call them 'cyber-jitneys' or 'e-jitneys'. It's a term with a long history in our urban areas, referring to car hire that often operates outside taxi laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitney Great play, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitney_(play) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitney_(play)
- spcelzrd 9y agoHN headline hurts my brain. Original is a stupid pun, but at least it makes sense. Juno Drivers ‘Gett’ Only Pennies Following $200M Acquisition
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- archildress 9y agoYeah, the pedantry of the modified headline is far less readable than the original.
- sctb 9y agoThanks, we reverted the submitted title of “Juno Drivers Shares 'Gett' a Couple Pennies Each in $200M Acquisition” to the original.
- noway421 9y agoInterestingly enough, just lately their landing page mentioned "50% reserved for drivers" http://web.archive.org/web/20170203175819/https://gojuno.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20170203175819/https://gojuno.com..., but no that claim is gone
- TuringNYC 9y agoTheoretically, it may still be 50% except the higher-class stock may have some huge liquidity preference. Such is the unfairness of multi-class capital structures. They can be very misleading, and the capital structure is often kept obscured so there is no way to value the worth of a stock in different scenarios.
- rdgthree 9y ago“In a nutshell, we’re going to be nice. We’re going to be ethical. We’re going to be respectful of our drivers,” he said. In that talk, Marco said his partners planned to give drivers a stake in the company. In fact, it had suggested it would set aside 50 percent of the company’s founding shares for drivers, as we previously reported. Initial reports on the deal indicated that all shares accumulated by drivers would be nullified in the acquisition Another driver forwarded us a letter that offered $251 for 14,173 restricted shares, a value of roughly $0.02 per share. This post[0], shared on the UberPeople forum, shows an estimated value for restricted shares at $0.20 each, last July. At least Uber isn't hiding behind some sign claiming to be ethical. [0]https://uberpeople.net/threads/juno-refer-a-driver-get-a-bonus.92609/ https://uberpeople.net/threads/juno-refer-a-driver-get-a-bon...
- seibelj 9y ago2 cents a share is better than nothing, which is what I got from the last startup I worked at that got acquired...
- s73ver 9y agoIt's still pretty insulting.
- hinkley 9y agoI worked at a place where, when we got acquired, our shares were worth about $40,000, so everybody was pretty happy. Then the stock tanked. And tanked. Six months later (1 year vestment) they were underwater, and still dropping. Everybody was miserable. If they had just handed us $250 on the day of the sale, I believe we would have been a little unhappy but we would have gotten over it.
- basseq 9y agoCareful reading too much into that. There's a difference between, "We will give you $100 or 500 RSUs" and "The street value of a RSU today is $0.20". How many times have we seen startups say, "We can't pay you a $100k salary, but we can pay you $50k and XYZ stock options, which is just as good because the company is going to explode!" That does not mean that XYZ stock options are worth $50k at grant.
- marvin 9y agoSerious question: Is there any way at all for a minority shareholder to avoid getting royally screwed in situations like these? Or are they completely at the mercy of the majority to be very nice and decent and not just give them the short end of the stick? Would it e.g. provide any benefit at all to have a clause about dilution not reducing ownership share more than the majority owners, or would it be possible to weasel out of such an agreement too? How do the rich and powerful do business with each other if agreements are this open to interpretation and backstabbing?
- AdamN 9y agoThe rich have better lawyers on their side and get better terms. Still, the rich get screwed too. They just have more resources to handle it (or they become unrich).
- yoaviram 9y agoIt's all down to the shareholder agreement. For example ours says all decisions are made by consensus, no matter how many shares you have. That's an extreme case which works with a very limited amount of shareholders, but the point is that you can protect minority rights.
- maxerickson 9y agoI think the cynical take is the only surefire one. If there isn't a liquid market where the thing can be sold (and thus a reliable price for it), treat it like it isn't worth anything. It's a conservative strategy, avoiding risk rather than seeking to mitigate it.
- Kiro 9y agoUber, Lyft, Juno. All the same.
- logicallee 9y ago[comment withdrawn]
- pythonistic 9y agoI'd forgotten what search engines were turning into before Google. Excite is a real blast from the past.
- metaphorm 9y agothis needs justification. how are they the same?
- s73ver 9y agoWell, both Uber and Lyft have some pretty predatory car renting programs. And with this move, Juno has shown that they're pretty crappy to their drivers, just like Uber. I guess we haven't heard of Lyft or Juno having a toxic culture of sexual harassment and bro-ness, so there's that.
- calcsam 9y agoThe phrase "nullify a share grant" has no legal meaning that I'm aware of. There are some semi-legal ways to do this, eg dilute some shareholders by issuing a ton of new shares and give them to other existing shareholders (you see this done in The Social Network). However, minority shareholders do have rights and they can sue if there is no basis for the new grants. What Juno seems to be doing is asking people to sign away both (1) their shares and (2) their right to sue in exchange for around 10% of what they previously thought was the cash value of their shares. I suspect the reason for this is that the acquisition is taking place in shares of Gett stock, not cash, and Gett doesn't want 10,000 small shareholders on its cap table, but also doesn't have $50 million of cash lying around to pay these drivers, so it's trying to pay them $5 million and make the problem go away.
- mcguire 9y agoDoesn't sound like they are real shares: "Still, drivers have been building up restricted shares (called RSUs)."
- calcsam 9y agoRestricted shares // RSUs are real shares, as long as they have vested. Restricted refers to the fact that they need to vest, as well as some other terms typically attached, like transfer restrictions.
- basseq 9y agoMost commonly (and traditionally), RSUs are "real shares" of common stock, just wrapped in another layer of requirements (e.g., vesting schedule). This is not always true (e.g., Facebook and "phantom shares"). Regardless, RSUs have a value that is pegged to common stock.
- wweidendorf 9y agoRSUs =/= restricted stock; however, people tend to use the terms interchangeably. A RSU isn't a real share until it vests (at which point it becomes a common share), while restricted stock is a real share that has vesting requirements or some performance requirements (or both).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- greglindahl 9y agoNone of the articles mention the amount that Juno raised, so it's possible that this sale is smaller than the liquidation preferences.
- gnicholas 9y agoYep. The question of whether the payment to drivers for their RSUs is "fair" depends on who is in line in front of them. It is possible that they could all try to band together and somehow block the sale, but without more information it's hard to assess whether that's a good idea or not. I would assume that the company's offer isn't an amazing deal, because if it were then the company would probably try to tout that to bolster/save their reputation. OTOH, it's possible/likely that the only way to "prove" that this is a good deal for drivers would be to violate confidentiality agreements with many investors.
- s73ver 9y agoHere's the thing I really don't get: This is going to get out. This is going to taint the brand. Why do something as shitty as this? Why do startups do this? Is it honestly that hard to be ethical, and pay out what you promised?