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> I can only imagine this story was spun by employee who saw the founders selling and getting bunch of money and now think they should have reaped some of the b

> I can only imagine this story was spun by employee who saw the founders selling and getting bunch of money and now think they should have reaped some of the benefits. Perhaps they should have. After all, without the employees' help Mailchimp wouldn't have been worth 12 billion today.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago
Founders of a company carry the risk. If you want to reap the benefits then you need to start a company. That is the risk and reward. It is sad when people see others succeed and get angry.
- nimih 5y ago
  All employees at a startup carry substantial risk. If you're working as a customer service rep at a startup which folds, you in all likelihood don't have the connections or financial stability that the founders and software engineers and data scientists and scrum masters have to gracefully transition to another job. If you're planning on having a kid, losing your job 3 weeks before you expected to be able to take paid parental leave is going to really throw a wrench in the works. &c &c
  - rocqua 5y ago
    I don't like the argument I am about to make when used to attack minimum wage, but I think it applies here. When you accepted the job, you knew the terms. Those included not getting equity, and those included carrying some risk with known reward. I don't see how the owners selling retroactively makes the risk-reward balance different. Unless you consider it a risk/downside that someone else gets a windfall and you don't get to share. That seems silly to me tho. How rich someone else is does not affect how much money I need to live, with a few exceptions (inflation, friends, power dynamics in pre-existing relationships).
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      > How rich someone else is does not affect how much money I need to live, with a few exceptions (inflation, friends, power dynamics in pre-existing relationships). Many people cannot afford to even own a home in the Bay Area because everyone else around is so rich. Relative wealth is important because "other rich people" drive up prices of everything, from housing, to groceries, to health care. If my salary doesn't change, but the people around me get a 10% raise, my buying power decreases.
      - rocqua 5y ago
        That holds if everyone else gets richer. It does not hold if 2 founders get richer. You barely compete with them for the same items, so it shouldn't affect your buying power at all that your founders got a windfall.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    That CSR’s work is worth a certain amount. The discussion is whether that amount best serves the CSR if paid all in cash or divided into a mix of cash and equity. In Mailchimp’s case, they were clear that it was all cash and no equity and I suspect that was the preference of the CSRs as well.
- andrewingram 5y ago
  From what I recall, the service was spun out of another company though, it didn't become its own thing before it was profitable. There was some origin risk in the original business, but MailChimp itself was arguably a low risk endeavour on the part of its founders.
- maxmamis 5y ago
  and what risk is that? if the company goes under, they need to get a job like everyone else. the only “risk” is that they no longer get to be the big boss. cry me a river. meanwhile they get to reap (in this case) 100% of the rewards from everyone else’s hard work. if that doesn’t make you angry, perhaps you should reevaluate whose interests your ideology serves.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Not responding to the article or the good or bad of it (frankly it bores me), but this is a strange view of “success”. There’s this strange malaise where people see something like this as their aim in life: to sell to some other guy for the big bucks as if this buyout was “the success” and as if this inducted then into Valhalla. It’s the mysticism of money. Apart from that, if people were serious about not selling, they’d make employees meaningful shareholders. Salary entails zero loyalty and zero stake in the company on the part of the employee. In the latter case, why would you believe that they wouldn’t sell? That’s what people do.
- stagger87 5y ago
  Genuine question, what's the risk? Usually owners aren't liable for corporation debt, which I would imagine reduces financial risk, are there other types of risk?
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
Then again, it seems Mailchimp was always clearly communicating to their emplyees that they didn't give equity and offered great compensation so no one was actually fooled.
- bjourne 5y ago
  Regardless, Mailchimp's engineers still sold their labour for way below its value, whether they were fooled or coerced.
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    In what way? If they knew they didn't have equity and still took low paying job then that is 100% on them.
    - bjourne 5y ago
      Why would any rational person sell their labour for way below its value if they weren't either coerced or fooled?
      - CryptoBanker 5y ago
        Not everyone acts or is able to act rationally all the time
      - ampersandy 5y ago
        They wouldn't — and Mailchimp employees didn't. The market value of your labour is what you can get a company to pay you. The hypothetical market value of employees in a world where Mailchimp did offer equity and employees stuck it out to reap that upside doesn't exist, so arguing the point makes no sense.
        bjourne 5y ago
        The value of one's labour is the value it generates - not what anyone is willing to pay for it. The value of the cumulative labour of Mailchimp's engineers is $12 billion which vastly exceeds the amount it was sold for.
OJFord 5y ago
If they hadn't sold, it'd still have a market value of (at least) $12B, and the employees still wouldn't have a claim to any of its assets or earnings.
eru 5y ago
That's what salary is for.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

Founders of a company carry the risk. If you want to reap the benefits then you need to start a company. That is the risk and reward. It is sad when people see others succeed and get angry.

nimih 5y ago
All employees at a startup carry substantial risk. If you're working as a customer service rep at a startup which folds, you in all likelihood don't have the connections or financial stability that the founders and software engineers and data scientists and scrum masters have to gracefully transition to another job. If you're planning on having a kid, losing your job 3 weeks before you expected to be able to take paid parental leave is going to really throw a wrench in the works. &c &c
- rocqua 5y ago
  I don't like the argument I am about to make when used to attack minimum wage, but I think it applies here. When you accepted the job, you knew the terms. Those included not getting equity, and those included carrying some risk with known reward. I don't see how the owners selling retroactively makes the risk-reward balance different. Unless you consider it a risk/downside that someone else gets a windfall and you don't get to share. That seems silly to me tho. How rich someone else is does not affect how much money I need to live, with a few exceptions (inflation, friends, power dynamics in pre-existing relationships).
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    > How rich someone else is does not affect how much money I need to live, with a few exceptions (inflation, friends, power dynamics in pre-existing relationships). Many people cannot afford to even own a home in the Bay Area because everyone else around is so rich. Relative wealth is important because "other rich people" drive up prices of everything, from housing, to groceries, to health care. If my salary doesn't change, but the people around me get a 10% raise, my buying power decreases.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      That holds if everyone else gets richer. It does not hold if 2 founders get richer. You barely compete with them for the same items, so it shouldn't affect your buying power at all that your founders got a windfall.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  That CSR’s work is worth a certain amount. The discussion is whether that amount best serves the CSR if paid all in cash or divided into a mix of cash and equity. In Mailchimp’s case, they were clear that it was all cash and no equity and I suspect that was the preference of the CSRs as well.
andrewingram 5y ago
From what I recall, the service was spun out of another company though, it didn't become its own thing before it was profitable. There was some origin risk in the original business, but MailChimp itself was arguably a low risk endeavour on the part of its founders.
maxmamis 5y ago
and what risk is that? if the company goes under, they need to get a job like everyone else. the only “risk” is that they no longer get to be the big boss. cry me a river. meanwhile they get to reap (in this case) 100% of the rewards from everyone else’s hard work. if that doesn’t make you angry, perhaps you should reevaluate whose interests your ideology serves.
bobthechef 5y ago
Not responding to the article or the good or bad of it (frankly it bores me), but this is a strange view of “success”. There’s this strange malaise where people see something like this as their aim in life: to sell to some other guy for the big bucks as if this buyout was “the success” and as if this inducted then into Valhalla. It’s the mysticism of money. Apart from that, if people were serious about not selling, they’d make employees meaningful shareholders. Salary entails zero loyalty and zero stake in the company on the part of the employee. In the latter case, why would you believe that they wouldn’t sell? That’s what people do.
stagger87 5y ago
Genuine question, what's the risk? Usually owners aren't liable for corporation debt, which I would imagine reduces financial risk, are there other types of risk?

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

Then again, it seems Mailchimp was always clearly communicating to their emplyees that they didn't give equity and offered great compensation so no one was actually fooled.

bjourne 5y ago
Regardless, Mailchimp's engineers still sold their labour for way below its value, whether they were fooled or coerced.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  In what way? If they knew they didn't have equity and still took low paying job then that is 100% on them.
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Why would any rational person sell their labour for way below its value if they weren't either coerced or fooled?
    - CryptoBanker 5y ago
      Not everyone acts or is able to act rationally all the time
    - ampersandy 5y ago
      They wouldn't — and Mailchimp employees didn't. The market value of your labour is what you can get a company to pay you. The hypothetical market value of employees in a world where Mailchimp did offer equity and employees stuck it out to reap that upside doesn't exist, so arguing the point makes no sense.
      - bjourne 5y ago
        The value of one's labour is the value it generates - not what anyone is willing to pay for it. The value of the cumulative labour of Mailchimp's engineers is $12 billion which vastly exceeds the amount it was sold for.

OJFord 5y ago

If they hadn't sold, it'd still have a market value of (at least) $12B, and the employees still wouldn't have a claim to any of its assets or earnings.

eru 5y ago

That's what salary is for.