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The alternative was to close down the company completely, I'm not sure how that would help the employees equity. Besides, options are by nature expiratory unle

The alternative was to close down the company completely, I'm not sure how that would help the employees equity. Besides, options are by nature expiratory unless certain milestones are reached, which obviously wasn't the case. And if the employees did have real equity there is no way the founder could have gotten that without their consent.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> The alternative was to close down the company completely No, the alternative was to give the IP and equity ownership proportionally to the employees, not 100% to the founder. Instead, they gave it all to the founder and none to the employees who built the IP (as far as I can tell from public documents). Employees were told they received nothing because their work was useless. Apparently it wasn’t so useless.
- duxup 6y ago
  I'm a little confused about how this works in a sort of mechanical function. At the time it was deemed worthless or whatever term we want to call it, the owners were the initial investors. They sold it (well some of them) back to the initial founder. It's their ownership to sell.... I go back to my point that we need to be honest about what the equity and rights of individual contributors really IS more than some ephemeral expectation that someone should get equity ... after most everyone has given up... or after others work to resurrect it.
  - itronitron 6y ago
    Dropping the price to exercise the options to zero dollars seems like it would be an equitable solution. If the company is really worth nothing then why should an option to buy a share of the company cost more than that?
    - duxup 6y ago
      >If the company is really worth nothing I'm not sure I understand why that would be or why that would even come up if you were investing in 'worth nothing'.
- p0ckets 6y ago
  Do we know for a fact that the investors sold the equity back to the founder and not the company (like a stock buyback)? The investors just wanted to get out, so tracking down former employees, deciding how much equity each one deserves, and selling them equity probably isn't what they want to spend time doing. So the only real options would be selling to the company, or to the founder.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> The alternative was to close down the company completely No, the alternative was to give the IP and equity ownership proportionally to the employees, not 100% to the founder. Instead, they gave it all to the founder and none to the employees who built the IP (as far as I can tell from public documents). Employees were told they received nothing because their work was useless. Apparently it wasn’t so useless.

duxup 6y ago
I'm a little confused about how this works in a sort of mechanical function. At the time it was deemed worthless or whatever term we want to call it, the owners were the initial investors. They sold it (well some of them) back to the initial founder. It's their ownership to sell.... I go back to my point that we need to be honest about what the equity and rights of individual contributors really IS more than some ephemeral expectation that someone should get equity ... after most everyone has given up... or after others work to resurrect it.
- itronitron 6y ago
  Dropping the price to exercise the options to zero dollars seems like it would be an equitable solution. If the company is really worth nothing then why should an option to buy a share of the company cost more than that?
  - duxup 6y ago
    >If the company is really worth nothing I'm not sure I understand why that would be or why that would even come up if you were investing in 'worth nothing'.
p0ckets 6y ago
Do we know for a fact that the investors sold the equity back to the founder and not the company (like a stock buyback)? The investors just wanted to get out, so tracking down former employees, deciding how much equity each one deserves, and selling them equity probably isn't what they want to spend time doing. So the only real options would be selling to the company, or to the founder.