If you're competing in any way, building in any part of the social media space, this is an invitation to have your product copied as soon as you see any traction.
Facebook doesn't need the money. It's looking for you to do the R&D.
Facebook doesn't need the money. It's looking for you to do the R&D.
Public companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize profits and investor returns.
They're simply using the data that's available to them to make great investment decisions to make more money.
It seems like a conflict of interest to invest in a company and then turn around and compete with them. If the end plan is to take their ideas once they start becoming successful, you don't need to give them money in the first place. (Case study: Snapchat)
The actual legal standard is much closer to “don’t rip off the company” than “you must grab onto every penny anywhere near your grasp.”
This thread has a bunch of references to court cases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393674
The common theme is that the directors of a company have incredible latitude to run it as they please, and courts won’t second-guess business decisions as long as they are vaguely plausible.
No, they don't. There are many articles on the subject, here is one:
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
Facebook is a Delaware company.
It's worth clarifying that only those to whom fiduciary duties are owed can ever sue for damages resulting from their breach. In other words, shareholders. That's how the threat gets operationalized—by a shareholder or class of shareholders suing the corporation for failing to maximize shareholder value through a fiduciary breach.
Anyways, the point I really wanted to make is that shareholder value maximization really is meaningfully encoded in American corporate law. If you meant to suggest that reality is less black-and-white than that, then I hope the foregoing ramble confirms that you are correct!
[1] https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redef...
[2] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/16/purpose-with-mean...
[3] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/27/on-the-purpose-of...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET8v47XPcUY&feature=youtu.be
Did it end up just being lip service, or are there lasting changes in industry or individual companies that we can point to which show prioritization of stakeholder value over simple shareholder value?
I read the Harvard Law corporate governance blog pretty regularly, and a staggering percentage of recent scholarship on there has been about corporate purpose, stakeholder capitalism, and ESG. ESG and stakeholder theory aren't exactly the same thing, but here's a good overview of how ESG might impact M&A and governance moving forward [2].
[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/06/19/making-corporate-... [2] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/02/20/the-coming-impact...
/s
Most of the times, acquirehire by these top companies is probably better than being a regular senior FAANG engineers.
Not sure why that is bad. It's probably not the top of the world (e.g. billionaires). But it's definitely a great situation to be in.
But the "incredible journey" startups, the ones built primarily to exit, are just bait&switch scams for their users. The users are enticed to enter a relationship with the startup, to build a part of their lives or their work around that startup, only for said startup to suddenly get bought out and the product/service cancelled, destroyed, or altered into a much worse and exploitative form.
I've personally seen this dance enough times, and I now refuse to consider depending on a service if I even suspect the founders are in for an exit, and not long-term business growth. I'll chose F(L)OSS alternative first, a stable company second, and a startup only if I can't afford to make the solution I need myself.
But let's not exaggerate. It's not bad for whatsapp founders. Better than 99.9999999999% of the population (maybe add a couple 9s at the end).
For me, I don't even wanna make a single donation because I need to save every dollar. I can't join any protest or get involved in any politics because I'm already busy enough with my own life.
Whatsapp founders now have 6,000,000,000 USD to power the change they want to see happen. Ok, maybe 5B, as they might want to keep 1B for living cost.