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Well, looking forward to the next Accidental Tech Podcast - should be very interesting to get Marco Arment's perspective on this. First Instapaper, now Tumbl
by ghshephard 14y ago
Well, looking forward to the next Accidental Tech Podcast - should be very interesting to get Marco Arment's perspective on this. First Instapaper, now Tumblr.
I wonder which will be a bigger deal for Marco...
[Edit - I also wonder whether he had an inkling that these conversations were taking place. He has been discussing his tumblr roots a bit more than usual recently, including his undocumented podcast easteregg that he built into tumblr, and the fact that the tumblr source code was open source, but not public, which allowed Marco to use it for future endeavors...
Edit 2: And this little hint from his Blog on May 11th.
"I ended up joining Davidville instead, for less money, because David would let me work on a brand new Mac with any keyboard I wanted and more than three feet of desk space. A few months later, we started Tumblr. Turned out to be the right move. "
]
- hkmurakami 14y agobigger personal/professional deal - instapaper (full ownership and design of product, years w. the product, etc.) bigger monetary deal - tumblr hands down
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoPlease note, I have zero inside information on this. Wikipedia attributes cofounder status to Marco[1]. Let's assume that he got a raw deal from Karp and had a potential 30% stake in the business. He worked on it for 3 years and 7 months. Let's just assume he fully vested (not quite accurate, but the math is easier). Over the course of five rounds of funding, maybe the final ownership stake of the founders was diluted from 100% to 10%[2]. Marco owns 3% of the company, and walks away with a hair over $30 million pre-tax. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment [2] Handy infographic: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/10/14/understanding-how-dilution-affects-you-at-a-startup/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/10/14/understanding-...
- hkmurakami 14y agoeven if he were a "first hire" and only had 1/10 that equity hell still get $3mm pretax; nothing to laugh at.
- ghshephard 14y agoDavid Karp has 25% of Tumblr [1], and makes it clear, that to start off with - it really was just David and Marco. "...Marco Arment, Karp’s first and, for a long time, only employee at Tumblr." http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/02/tumblr-david-karps-800-million-art-project/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/02/tumblr-...
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago"Employee" Wow, that's a kick in the balls.
- tptacek 14y agoI don't follow. Also: Marco calls himself an "employee" as well.
- ghshephard 14y agoI think the suggestion is that Marco probably didn't have a sizable equity chunk - I.E. the 70/30 split might be generous - and it very well might have been something closer to 95/5. I've listened to pretty much all his podcasts, and while Marco is pretty wide open when it comes to financials (in one memorable episode, he detailed pretty much every line-item costs associated with instapaper, and he's been even more open with "The Magazine" - discussing all of the revenue and cost elements), I don't ever recall him discussing his equity stake in tumblr, though, he did mention that he's been chatting with David recently...