Here’s What Everybody Made From The Slide Sale | Hacker News Reader

Here’s What Everybody Made From The Slide Sale

techcrunch.com

50 pointsgrep30 comments

As an employee, you definitely wanted to be at the company when it was purchased since 48 million was earmarked for the soon to be google employees.

It sucks if you're someone who had left the company recently (especially if you paid money to secure your options)... there is something rather backhanded about this kind of dealing. Arrington alluded to it during YC's angel conf, but from an investor's perspective. In this case it can affect employees as well.

I suppose this is the nature of private companies. The controlling parties can really do whatever they want, including diluting you out of the picture or (in this case) laundering value into employee retention plans.

Repeat after me,

"I will never make any money beyond a salary working for somebody else. My only chance at striking it rich is by being a founder in my own company, or getting lucky in the lottery (or (casino, inheritance, getting run over by Jason Calcanis' Tesla, etc)."

Every once and a while there's a statistical outlier like Youtube where employees actually cash out with enough money to feel like they're not poor in San Francisco. I think Youtube was the last one, in what, 2005?

There are a lot of people in finance making millions outside of their salary working for other people.

A lot of meaning what .. 250,000 globally? Maybe 500,000? I doubt many of those people are hacker news readers.

Compared to how many people are making millions founding technology companies.

False.

Google agreed to dish 48m, in retention bonuses. There about 100 employees, so that averages about 480,000 per employee. Not sure what the vesting period is, but assuming it is at least 2 years.

Not bad, but not life changing either. After taxes, you can afford the downpayment of a Condo in SOMA + a bit more, or buy a small one bedroom in Mountain View.

Moral of the story, if you want to be rich, start your own startup.

Retention bonuses are never distributed equally. Often, you only give them to a fraction of your employees - your best.

It's certainly possible that a few of the senior people walked away with a few million apiece (as a way of compensating them for the fact that they earned nothing in the sale).

By that logic, if you want to be rich, win the lotto.

Or, to combine the two: start a lotto.

That reminded me of "How to win at Roulette": http://i.imgur.com/6euVL.jpg

Another great way to win at Roulette (and a great read): http://amzn.to/bxgmk5

A few hundred thousand can easily be life-changing, especially at a young age. It means freedom to choose projects without drawing a salary, or at a below-usual salary, for many years. Even just socked away, it could mean an extra $million+ by retirement age. It could also be destructive -- if it encourages new addictions or other unsustainable increases in consumption. Either way, nothing to sneeze at.

Around here, that $480k would buy a 100 year-old 1,200 sq. ft house on 20 acres of land with a few outbuildings and have about $200k left over for toys.

For me that would be life-changing: no mortgage and the ability to do whatever I felt like.

As far as I can tell, succeeding in a startup that you own, even if you're a founder and make out pretty well, largely boils down to the rule of pinball:

Win, and you get to keep playing.

> After taxes, you can afford the downpayment of a Condo in SOMA + a bit more, or buy a small one bedroom in Mountain View.

There has to be some other measuring stick to money than real estate...

It's better than what USA Today would use. They'd tell you that if you converted it into pennies and stacked it straight up it would be the third largest building in the world.

Tesla Roadsters?

I still don't understand what Slide does or makes or why a company would be interested in acquiring them.

Can someone explain this to me in non-hype terms?

What is Google paying for here exactly?

Google is getting a bunch of people who get social games (and social software in general) -- something they've historically been pretty bad at. Of course, they are buying the (distant) 2nd horse behind Zynga, aren't they?

I think Playdom is probably a lot larger than Slide... oh hrm and Playdom was just acquired by Disney for $763M. Slide is definitely small fries in comparison to Playdom or Zynga.

Max actually did quite well.

True, but I'm guessing the lower-level employees not so much after you take out all the money for the preferred shareholders, even the ones who invested at crazy valuations.

Edit: Maybe they arent so screwed after all, depending on how the retention bonuses are dished out.

Funny, I thought the exact opposite.

He invested $7 million and five years of sweat to come out with $39 million. If he was a passive investor, a 5x return would be decent. But he also poured five years of his life into the company, earning (presumably) a below-market salary and working 3x as much as a "normal" job.

Mind you, I don't think he's devasted at the result, but I bet he bad been hoping for much, much more.

"...founder Max Levchin did the best out of the sale, making a comparable sum to the one he made from PayPal...[for] a total of $39m."

Given that PayPal sold to eBay for $1.5b, doesn't $39m sound too low? Does anyone know how much he made from PayPal's sale?

I think it was about the same, 30-something million. Peter Theil made about twice as much from the PayPal sale though.

Isn't this highly unusual? Don't preferences usually give later investors the profits first? Did Fidelity and T Rowe Price really want into Slide so badly that they were willing to let the earlier investors receive a preference over them?

It doesn't really make sense to me the way this is broken down. I would have expected basically everyone to make about 2x their money.

Earliest investors get priority since they took the most risk.

While that sounds logical, it typically works the opposite way. In a big cashout early investors often get the highest ROI because they got in at the lowest price, but they usually get paid last.

Sometime in the future I expect to see this same type of posting about Twitter and Digg.

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