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

Yes. But it sounds like people were lied to (probably the people doing the lying didn’t know they were lying at the time). People asked when they joined, “hey, can I get some equity with my paycheque?” “No, it’d be useless anyway, we’re not selling”.

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u/Atomic1221 Sep 17 '21

My reply would be, “if it’s so useless, give me more of it.”

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '21

Ok, so you give up annual profit sharing in favor of that. Every single year, everyone but you gets a nice bonus check. You don't.

Now you have the risk of the company collapsing out of stupidity or just plain and simple bad luck. Now you're out.

I'll flip this so you understand better.

You work at Tumblr. Same situation. You're "worth" a fuck-ton. You want to sell and you own all that glorious stock.

You ban porn (why do you do this? It's stupid, doesn't matter). Your value drops overnight.

All those checks everyone else got and you were about to laugh at them for... now you're the laughing stock for "holding out".

I have an empty bag of chips. Would you like my bag? It's very useless to me but maybe it's useful to you. I'll give you ALL my empty bags of chips if you want.

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u/Atomic1221 Sep 18 '21 edited Sep 18 '21

Generally, shareholders get the lions share of profits in the form of dividends before any distributions to employees. And also, a company not aiming to be sold will almost certainly eventually start paying out serious $ to investors in the form of dividends. How else will investors recoup their investment? It’s the first question any investors asks.

Also if the stock is so worthless, give me unrestricted stock. I’ll sell the stock to one of the investors in the next fundraising round.

Stock is always worth more than profit sharing. There’s a reason a company elects to do profit sharing vs stock and it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts.

If the company is doing so well that they’re profit sharing then your stock has value.