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I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pincus is the antithesis of a great CEO. He's basically a scumbag. He scummed (fired) his early employees pre-IPO, h

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pincus is the antithesis of a great CEO. He's basically a scumbag. He scummed (fired) his early employees pre-IPO, he cashed out $200M during the share price peak and left everyone with 6-month options they couldn't exercise, he's referring to hard working employees as "brothers and sisters" in a layoff letter that sounds more like a blog post than a serious document. This guy should be jailed (and Kleiner reviewed for inflating the stock price of this company), he (and his fad driven company) are an awful example of a tech leader and the tech business in general. He's screwed over countless people, investors and the public market, while sitting back laughing at everyone and everything. It's a shame VC's are so quick to invest in the latest fad because of some temporary "traction" for online games lacking any sort f substance and basically being rips of Maxis titles from yesteryear. I've sat in various lunches with VC's where they basically say to each other "hey, we missed out on the Instagram deal, what are the other photo sharing apps in the space we can invest in." It's frightening to see countless idiotic apps get institutional money by basically making derivative products of other crap apps. It's a bad cycle and it needs to end so we don't have more companies like Zynga on the horizon. But I digress, this guy is a major scumbag!

colmvp 13y ago
Even if you fire your early employees, don't they still retain the equity earned up to that point?
- sdoowpilihp 13y ago
  Not necessarily. There are a number of ways in which you can lose the rights to your shares, including clawbacks, or clauses in a contract that may stipulate changes to the status of your equity post termination of your employment. A number of equity contracts I have seen also have clauses that state that the board may change the terms of the equity grants at their sole discretion. In other words, until you see an exit with your equity, it's not really your equity.
- djt 13y ago
  i believe in this case ex-employees did not get to vest their stock
- dakrisht 13y ago
  Most employees of startup companies are given restricted stock with a typical 4-year / 1-year cliff vesting schedule. Aka - they have to be with the the company for 4 years to vest 100% of their shares (25% gets vested on the "cliff")
  - greghinch 13y ago
    Also with options, you generally still have to buy the vested portion when you leave, usually within something like 90 days. So you actually have to spend money to keep them, and hope the share price goes up
kamaal 13y ago
>>he cashed out $200M during the share price peak This shows he clearly knew of what was coming and had to make hit-and-run profit to get money out of it. I don't know who would ever want to work with such a person again. Besides having $200 million means he may never need to work again.
jmtame 13y ago
I sent him an e-mail asking if he would reconsider a fairly absurd trademark infringement claim against our startup (http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/with-friends-joke-goes-here/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/with-friends-joke-goes-here...). He forwarded my e-mail to their corporate counsel, completely throwing out any desire to work with us and leave the lawyers out of it. Pincus has forever gone down in my book as a scumbag. He's the farthest thing from startup friendly that I can think of; I heard he was going to start a startup incubator a year or two ago. I think you'd have to be desperate or crazy to want to work with a guy like that.
obstacle1 13y ago
>It's a shame VC's are so quick to invest in the latest fad because of some temporary "traction" for online games lacking any sort f substance and basically being rips of Maxis titles from yesteryear. You understand that the entire reason VCs exist is to make money, not do 'substantial things', right? That's not to say the two are mutually exclusive concepts. Just as you can have substantive products that make money, you can also have inane products that make money. The common denominator is money -- this is business. If the latest iteration of Instagram For Squirrels brings in $$$, businesspeople will take a cut.
Jd 13y ago
To a certain extent I wish that the Paypal mafia had been more successful since I think if they had been able to launch a their own currency it would have shaken up the industry even further, and moved a lot more of it towards productive ventures (i.e. Tesla, SpaceX) than the cruft that fills the industry today. But anyways, they weren't the people for the job. Maybe someone else will do it soon.

colmvp 13y ago

Even if you fire your early employees, don't they still retain the equity earned up to that point?

sdoowpilihp 13y ago
Not necessarily. There are a number of ways in which you can lose the rights to your shares, including clawbacks, or clauses in a contract that may stipulate changes to the status of your equity post termination of your employment. A number of equity contracts I have seen also have clauses that state that the board may change the terms of the equity grants at their sole discretion. In other words, until you see an exit with your equity, it's not really your equity.
djt 13y ago
i believe in this case ex-employees did not get to vest their stock
dakrisht 13y ago
Most employees of startup companies are given restricted stock with a typical 4-year / 1-year cliff vesting schedule. Aka - they have to be with the the company for 4 years to vest 100% of their shares (25% gets vested on the "cliff")
- greghinch 13y ago
  Also with options, you generally still have to buy the vested portion when you leave, usually within something like 90 days. So you actually have to spend money to keep them, and hope the share price goes up

kamaal 13y ago

>>he cashed out $200M during the share price peak This shows he clearly knew of what was coming and had to make hit-and-run profit to get money out of it. I don't know who would ever want to work with such a person again. Besides having $200 million means he may never need to work again.

jmtame 13y ago

I sent him an e-mail asking if he would reconsider a fairly absurd trademark infringement claim against our startup (http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/with-friends-joke-goes-here/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/with-friends-joke-goes-here...). He forwarded my e-mail to their corporate counsel, completely throwing out any desire to work with us and leave the lawyers out of it. Pincus has forever gone down in my book as a scumbag. He's the farthest thing from startup friendly that I can think of; I heard he was going to start a startup incubator a year or two ago. I think you'd have to be desperate or crazy to want to work with a guy like that.

obstacle1 13y ago

>It's a shame VC's are so quick to invest in the latest fad because of some temporary "traction" for online games lacking any sort f substance and basically being rips of Maxis titles from yesteryear. You understand that the entire reason VCs exist is to make money, not do 'substantial things', right? That's not to say the two are mutually exclusive concepts. Just as you can have substantive products that make money, you can also have inane products that make money. The common denominator is money -- this is business. If the latest iteration of Instagram For Squirrels brings in $$$, businesspeople will take a cut.

Jd 13y ago

To a certain extent I wish that the Paypal mafia had been more successful since I think if they had been able to launch a their own currency it would have shaken up the industry even further, and moved a lot more of it towards productive ventures (i.e. Tesla, SpaceX) than the cruft that fills the industry today. But anyways, they weren't the people for the job. Maybe someone else will do it soon.