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Comment by ahepp | Hacker News Reader

Why does an executive deserve to de-risk more than other employees? If anything, that's backwards. Who the hell doesn't want to de-risk? Why is that option only given to certain people, as opposed to offering everyone at the company a chance to sell 10% of their shares?

I'm sure it's legal, but it absolutely is fucking the employees over. Saying "the employees could have negotiated better" is kinda just playing the thunderdome card. Employees can't reasonably prevent company insiders from fucking them over with stock shenanigans. That's part of what makes the practice so insidious, and why public stock markets are so highly regulated.

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> Why does an executive deserve to de-risk more than other employees?

Yes. The SEC used to prevent insiders from selling stock until two years after the IPO. That ended some time around 2006, I think.

lock up periods are still fairly common, did the sec really require 2 years at one point?

Yes. It took me six years to cash out of Autodesk, since the first stages went to getting enough cash to pay the taxes on the next stage.

You can blame the execs, but the real question is, where was the board of directors who were supposed to provide governance during this time. Ultimately they approved it and you don't hear anyone calling for their ousting.

I'm not going to bat for the executives at all, but given the opportunity to take $22m off the table ala Dan Wright, why wouldn't you? Shame on him but he'll wipe his tears with hundred dollar bills. Why did the Board approve this sale — that's the real question.

it is not an executive's fault to want to de-risk. THis is capitalism, and everyone looks out to himself only.

it is venture capitalist's fault for signing up for this deal, that KILLED a company. Sure, they bribed executive to sign term sheet by allowing him to cash out, but now the entirety of DataRobot is going to be worth 0. VCs basically destroyed value of their LPs.

next time, VCs should think about employees who put hard work and keep company operating, not only executives.

Without people - any startup is just a worthless legal entity.

> THis is capitalism, and everyone looks out to himself only.

Absolutely not, Capitalism required democracy a system of justice and many other attributes of modern state. 'Law of the jungle' is niot capitalism and does not produce functional society.

The only thing that capitalism requires is stable full property rights (including transfer) on capital. It most certainly doesn't require democracy; most authocracies today are capitalist.

"stable property rights" can become a rather large number of rights.

Corruption is probably a bigger threat to these rights than nominal form of government; I'd say what is really needed is a strong tradition of rule of law.

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