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The CEO of WebVan negotiated a contract to pay him $375,000 per year for life - including his wife's life, if she survives him. I'm not sure what to say except

• koolba 7y ago
  Not really. The company went bankrupt and it’s an unsecured debt. It would have been a good play if it was collateralized or the company actually succeeded.
  • abraae 7y ago
    Yes, that seems the opposite of the kind of deal you'd want to make with a hotly burning startup.
  • subpixel 7y ago
    Ah, I assumed the deal was independent of WebVan's fate. I acknowledge that makes little sense. I must have been captivated by the vision of that check in the mail.
• simplicio 7y ago
  Is he still getting paid? I'd assume once the company went under there'd be no one to do the paying. In which case it doesn't seem like such a great play.
• gearhart 7y ago
  Well, sort of - it was a really good start, but given that was his incentive structure he should have been slowly and steadily building a sustainable business and instead he went and blew what could have been the opportunity of a lifetime by not being able to say no to bad strategy pressure from overly-aggressive VCs. Good negotiator. Bad CEO. You could also say that it was really good negotiation by the other side; if you're a board member of a startup during the bubble and all you get to control is CEO pay, then you did everything you could to incentivise him to behave sensibly, and the rest unfortunately was on him.