5 ms·

The Writer of this article needs to perform some fact checking. There are nowhere near 1600 Millionaires in Twitter - closer to 600 to 700 is the number most co

The Writer of this article needs to perform some fact checking. There are nowhere near 1600 Millionaires in Twitter - closer to 600 to 700 is the number most common heard in their offices. A lot of those are not at the end of their vesting periods either so "Getting Out" is a meaningless term, not feasible for the next 2-3 quarters. The quality of Wired articles is really plumbing the depths these days.

prostoalex 13y ago
TWTR's fluctuation so far has been $38.80 - $74.73. Wouldn't you expect the fluctuation in millionaire numbers to follow that, and count of millionaires to be on the high side during the stock's ups? At peak $74.73 price it only takes 13,382 shares to go over $1 mil, which for company with 555,200,000 shares outstanding is 0.002% grant, generous, but not an unheard-of amount.
- product50 13y ago
  By the same logic, Google's stock is at $1100 meaning anyone with 900 shares of Google is also a millionaire. Now I don't know about you, but I have some software engineer friends at Google and, first hand information from them, they are NOT millionaires. Typically, companies know how much they are worth (or will be worth post IPO) and distribute stock to employees accordingly. Exception is of course if you join the company in the early rounds of funding (when typically the valuation of the company is low so you have to compensate with more stocks). Twitter almost doubled its headcount in the last year itself - I am not sure if they were paying 10s of thousands shares to newly joined employees especially when their last valuation (before IPO) valued Twitter at $10B or so.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    Some people have been offered that, and others have not. http://www.quora.com/Salaries/I-was-offered-15000-RSUs-as-part-of-my-Twitter-offer-a-year-ago-I-didnt-take-it-Does-that-mean-they-wouldve-been-worth-600-000-today-ignoring-tax http://www.quora.com/Salaries/I-was-offered-15000-RSUs-as-pa...
anigbrowl 13y ago
Most likely that # is extrapolated from share-employee allocations listed in SEC filings x maximum stock price. You're kind of missing the point of the article by getting finicky over trivial details, the point being the highly questionable valuation of the firm.
- product50 13y ago
  Well, the heading of the article itself points to paper millionaires and the first line of the article refers to the 1600 millionaires number..
jblow 13y ago
Indeed, such a lousy article. The stock is still net up almost 50% in THREE MONTHS and yet somehow he is writing some doomsday scenario article about it. It reminds me of the crappy articles talking about how TSLA was down and doing terrible, when the price was around 25, months after it IPO'd at 17. I wish I could downvote this article.
zwily 13y ago
Employees also likely have a 6-month lockout, so even if they're vested, they still can't sell yet.

prostoalex 13y ago

TWTR's fluctuation so far has been $38.80 - $74.73. Wouldn't you expect the fluctuation in millionaire numbers to follow that, and count of millionaires to be on the high side during the stock's ups? At peak $74.73 price it only takes 13,382 shares to go over $1 mil, which for company with 555,200,000 shares outstanding is 0.002% grant, generous, but not an unheard-of amount.

product50 13y ago
By the same logic, Google's stock is at $1100 meaning anyone with 900 shares of Google is also a millionaire. Now I don't know about you, but I have some software engineer friends at Google and, first hand information from them, they are NOT millionaires. Typically, companies know how much they are worth (or will be worth post IPO) and distribute stock to employees accordingly. Exception is of course if you join the company in the early rounds of funding (when typically the valuation of the company is low so you have to compensate with more stocks). Twitter almost doubled its headcount in the last year itself - I am not sure if they were paying 10s of thousands shares to newly joined employees especially when their last valuation (before IPO) valued Twitter at $10B or so.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Some people have been offered that, and others have not. http://www.quora.com/Salaries/I-was-offered-15000-RSUs-as-part-of-my-Twitter-offer-a-year-ago-I-didnt-take-it-Does-that-mean-they-wouldve-been-worth-600-000-today-ignoring-tax http://www.quora.com/Salaries/I-was-offered-15000-RSUs-as-pa...

anigbrowl 13y ago

Most likely that # is extrapolated from share-employee allocations listed in SEC filings x maximum stock price. You're kind of missing the point of the article by getting finicky over trivial details, the point being the highly questionable valuation of the firm.

product50 13y ago
Well, the heading of the article itself points to paper millionaires and the first line of the article refers to the 1600 millionaires number..

jblow 13y ago

Indeed, such a lousy article. The stock is still net up almost 50% in THREE MONTHS and yet somehow he is writing some doomsday scenario article about it. It reminds me of the crappy articles talking about how TSLA was down and doing terrible, when the price was around 25, months after it IPO'd at 17. I wish I could downvote this article.

zwily 13y ago

Employees also likely have a 6-month lockout, so even if they're vested, they still can't sell yet.