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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

If I'm Neumann, I'm taking 200-250 million dollars of my 1.7 billion in winnings and giving it away to the laid off employees (about 90k each).

Imagine the positive press you could drum up about yourself! All while keeping 1.5 billion dollars!

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Well he's not you, so he's keeping 1.7 billion. No one cares at large. Investors actually respected Shkreli, and the masses don't even remember who that is. Just cover your legal bases lol

The more likely outcome is that he's now focused on protecting that nine figure status as if his life depended on it.

Gotta stay in the three-comma club.

This would upset me if I was one of the remaining employees.

Good point! Google says there are 15k employees at WeWork, how about EVERYONE gets 50k.

750M given away, still have a billion dollars and a bunch of goodwill.

He doesn’t just get $1.7B. There’s taxes involved.

I'm sure he could just donate a few mil to some charities and then bribe or otherwise manipulate journalists with another few mil, and generate MUCH more positive press overall with that money.

Or he could start a philanthropic foundation that mostly exists to put his name on buildings and cement his legacy for a hundred years or more.

What about the taxes? Post fees and taxes, it won’t be $1.7B

Why?

> Imagine the positive press

Why? A fraction of that will buy you even better positive press.

Positive press of this magnitude can help propel your next big idea. If you have a reputation of compensating employees well when startup ideas don't pan out they will be more likely to want to join the next one.

Though there are probably more news worth things you could do with 300m.

Not being selfish?

Empathy and because he made an order of magnitude more money than he can spend in a lifetime?

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