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A little weird to assume he “made” $3.2 million from the house. Who knows what he bought it for, what he owed on it, what his profit in the transaction was, etc
by austenallred 5y ago
A little weird to assume he “made” $3.2 million from the house. Who knows what he bought it for, what he owed on it, what his profit in the transaction was, etc.
Maybe he’s neck deep in debt? Maybe he spent all his money on a boat assuming a windfall would come that never came. There can be any number of reasons someone would sell their house as their company goes under.
Seems pretty clear he was fully planing on the acquisition to go through. Which may be haphazard, but happens.
The most likely answer to, “Why did he fire everyone instantly with no severance?” is “Because there is no money.” It seems very likely after the acquisition fell through there was simply nothing left.
- dylan604 5y agoNobody wants to layoff 90% of staff as CEO, so it is understandable to put it off for as long as possible. It's hard to admit things are that bad. If they did the layoffs early enough to have enough cash to pay severance, then this story would have come out months ago. Instead, the CEO held out hope that a deal would come through to make it no longer his problem. The deal fell through, and now they've burned through the cash that could have been used for severance. So instead of severance, they kept their jobs that much longer which is essentially what severance is meant to cover. I'm not excusing CEO's behavior. It was 100% poorly managed. However, it is a learnable lesson for others that could be in this position. This is a forum full of startups or hopefuls. Not all startups will succeed. There are tough decisions to be made. Nobody will be happy about potential loss of their job. There's always the decision to keep people informed with the potential of panic ship jumping vs going all in on a bet of selling the company.
- austenallred 5y agoAlso if you’re close to an acquisition and you start laying people off it will probably kill the acquisition anyways, so there’s that to balance.
- browniefed 5y agoHe bought it for 1.2 million if I recall correctly. That is all public information in Portland. Not saying he should be funding anything w/ personal money but he sold at a substantial profit to what he bought it at.