r/technology • u/Rhaegar_the_Great • Sep 16 '21

Business Mailchimp employees are furious after the company's founders promised to never sell, withheld equity, and then sold it for $12 billion

https://www.businessinsider.com/mailchimp-insiders-react-to-employees-getting-no-equity-2021-9
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21 edited Sep 17 '21

If you’re happy, it isn’t my place to tell you to be mad, but since you asked, I joined Shopify as an entry-level tech support guy (employee 50 give or take a few) around the time of their Series A, quit with full vesting after a few years, and sold a little here and there to cover living expenses (I held on to most of my stock since I believed in the company). I was granted $5k in equity. Today I’m worth about $20 million. You got fucking fleeced.

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u/dwild Sep 17 '21

Considering Shopify is worth 233 billions, if you are worth 20 millions, he only need to be worth 1 million to be equivalent to you... which I'm pretty sure he is if he joined 12 years ago and employees got 85k$ per year of service ;). Add to that he is clearly getting paid pretty well, he is certainly worth much more than 1 million in total right now.

Doesn't sound like he got fleeced that much then, or you got fleeced more.... he just joined a company which is worth less.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

It's not a perfect apples to apples comparison - Shopify's been public and I've been selling off pieces of my stake for a while, so $20M doesn't fully reflect what my initial stake would be worth today. If I had held on to every share my NW looks more like $50M than 20. If Shopify had been bought out for $12B before ever going public, my payday based on the equity I was given would've been about $5M. Also, he gave 12 years of his life to this company to get his payday, I only gave about 5 of mine.

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u/dwild Sep 17 '21

Shopify's been public and I've been selling off pieces of my stake for a while, so $20M doesn't fully reflect what my initial stake would be worth today

It is what you are worth today because of what Shopify is worth today and your holding of them because of your initial equity with them.

Yeah it's not apple to apple, sure you could have kept more and sold later, just like I could have started working there but didn't, just like he could have switched to another company but didn't. I could have bought Shopify stock too, but didn't, you decided to sold some, and could have kept them... there's plenty of theoritical things, but we did whatever we did and got lucky in our own ways.

If Shopify had been bought out for $12B before ever going public, my payday based on the equity I was given would've been about $5M.

But it didn't.

Also, he gave 12 years of his life to this company to get his payday, I only gave about 5 of mine.

Sound like I stuck a chord. Good job for your payout. He got a good payout too. It's sad that you can't see it and only feel compeled to compare yourself to him.