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This is the second time that Monty left a company that he had no control over even though it was his software "baby" that the company was selling. At least the

by eis 4y ago

This is the second time that Monty left a company that he had no control over even though it was his software "baby" that the company was selling. At least the first time he made some good money. But I'm not sure if that is the case this time. Third time's the charm? Monty you should retain control over the companies that you want to sell your product under. If you don't control over 50% then it's not "your company" anymore.

bombcar 4y ago
Maybe he has enough money to be comfortable and should just work on a non-profit doing database things.
robocat 4y ago
> If you don't control over 50% Founders will virtually always lose control once they hop on the investor conveyor belt. It can happen as soon as Round A e.g. VC wants 25% with 10% option pool and seed investors owns 15% (say due to carry along provisions) - et voila - founder diluted to 50%! It often is inevitable as soon as a founder takes seed money because (a) if you must take seed you probably need future cash for competitive growth, and (b) seed investors define expectation of future VC rounds (e.g. YC demo day). The well known exceptions where founders retained control are outliers. Furthermore, founders are third class because investors get first class preferential shares. Preferential shares have a variety of powerful benefits over common shares - including rights to oust the founders (under conditions that will usually occur: VCs take advantage of the natural optimism of founders). Even worse: the game is systematically rigged against founders, because VCs are “the house” and have been setting up the rules while playing multiple games for decades, but it is usually a founders first game. Bacon and egg breakfast: where the founders are the fully committed pigs providing the bacon, but the investors are chickens providing the eggs. 10 years of life is one hock. If a founder wins a game and want to play again, then a founder often starts their own casino by doing seed rounds. Sometimes a successful founder can afford to start a new business without using VC investment (self-invests). VC capital can be a drug worth taking if you fully manage your risks. Just beware that the industry rule-of-thumb is that 90% of the time a founder has an expected payout of approximately $0. The YCombinator casino is a bit of an exception because they better understand how much a founder is worth so they help founders play games with other casinos. But you still can’t argue that your sweat equity should be equally worth dollars invested: a software developer taking a $100k paycut for the first year of a startup should receive $100k of preferential shares - but I have never heard of that happening. Subtle game play.
PeterZaitsev 4y ago
After leaving Sun Monty in fact started Monty Programming AB - company he started based on "Hacking Business Models" https://hbm.mariadb.org/ https://hbm.mariadb.org/ It was really company "ran by engineers" focused on developers. Later though he merged with "SkySQL" and the company became MariaDB Corporation

by eis 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

Maybe he has enough money to be comfortable and should just work on a non-profit doing database things.

robocat 4y ago

> If you don't control over 50% Founders will virtually always lose control once they hop on the investor conveyor belt. It can happen as soon as Round A e.g. VC wants 25% with 10% option pool and seed investors owns 15% (say due to carry along provisions) - et voila - founder diluted to 50%! It often is inevitable as soon as a founder takes seed money because (a) if you must take seed you probably need future cash for competitive growth, and (b) seed investors define expectation of future VC rounds (e.g. YC demo day). The well known exceptions where founders retained control are outliers. Furthermore, founders are third class because investors get first class preferential shares. Preferential shares have a variety of powerful benefits over common shares - including rights to oust the founders (under conditions that will usually occur: VCs take advantage of the natural optimism of founders). Even worse: the game is systematically rigged against founders, because VCs are “the house” and have been setting up the rules while playing multiple games for decades, but it is usually a founders first game. Bacon and egg breakfast: where the founders are the fully committed pigs providing the bacon, but the investors are chickens providing the eggs. 10 years of life is one hock. If a founder wins a game and want to play again, then a founder often starts their own casino by doing seed rounds. Sometimes a successful founder can afford to start a new business without using VC investment (self-invests). VC capital can be a drug worth taking if you fully manage your risks. Just beware that the industry rule-of-thumb is that 90% of the time a founder has an expected payout of approximately $0. The YCombinator casino is a bit of an exception because they better understand how much a founder is worth so they help founders play games with other casinos. But you still can’t argue that your sweat equity should be equally worth dollars invested: a software developer taking a $100k paycut for the first year of a startup should receive $100k of preferential shares - but I have never heard of that happening. Subtle game play.

PeterZaitsev 4y ago

After leaving Sun Monty in fact started Monty Programming AB - company he started based on "Hacking Business Models" https://hbm.mariadb.org/ https://hbm.mariadb.org/ It was really company "ran by engineers" focused on developers. Later though he merged with "SkySQL" and the company became MariaDB Corporation