3 ms·
His mistake wasn’t in taking the wrong amount of LSD. His mistake was testing it for the first time in an important meeting. But it seems this is a common type
by wildermuthn 5y ago
His mistake wasn’t in taking the wrong amount of LSD. His mistake was testing it for the first time in an important meeting. But it seems this is a common type of mistake for him: taking unnecessary risks for himself rather than necessary risks for his company.
- ProAm 5y agoThis wasnt his first mistake, this was the one that finally pushed things past acceptable comfort for other decision makers. Founder/ceo of a startup is high risk, high reward and he lost on his gamble. It happens all the time. The company will continue without him.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago>Founder/ceo of a startup is high risk, high reward and he lost on his gamble. Hard to say he lost overall if he is walking away with 8-9 figure equity.
- azinman2 5y agoBut is that actually true? Most of the time in these oysters, you end up re-capped and your original equity taken away.
- azinman2 5y agoOysters is obviously an autocorrect failure. Guessing I meant “situation” or the like.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoIf that's the case, I haven't seen it. Equity can come with clawback criteria, but that usually has a defined duration, which has certainly expired because the company was founded 8 years ago. Companies can't just kick someone off the cap table once they have vested equity.
- azinman2 5y agoFirst, we don’t know the specifics of that original agreement. Further, they can change the pricing to dramatically reduce the value. I personally know someone who effectively lost control of their company and with it any real equity in a company that’s now very very large, and I’ve seen it be attempted with another friend as well. There’s no shortage of stories out there of founders being burned by VCs once the company has real money behind it.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoDilution and loss of control are entirely different than removing a single owner from the cap table. Down rounds and massive dilution absolutely happen, but this hits the entire cap table.
- azinman2 5y agoExcept they can treat current employees differently. It doesn’t have to be a down round. In the case I’m thinking of, valuation went up a lot… it was the opposite of a down round. And it was all engineered to screw all the previous people as it was taken over by an entirely new crew as a lead investor directed.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoIt is hard to speculate on what happened without more details. There are a lot of ways founders and employees can bee screwed, especially shenanigans with options, but as I said above, Im not aware of any of anyway to destroy fully granted/vested stock.