thebradbain

It’s called politicking. It happens between any group of people of any size greater than 1: what priorities to focus on, what to apply extra scrutiny to, what to leave alone for another day, etc.

In our government, that’s a big part of what the president’s role is. “Bully pulpit” and all that. Presidents do it every day, for smaller and higher profile cases.

At that level, it’s all negotiation. If they didn’t want (or feared the) scrutiny, corporate interests wouldn’t have started the negotiation in the first place. They know it looks bad if Biden doesn’t respond, and that he must in some way. They’re just betting that he won’t start with such a strong gambit, because corporations are no longer afraid of our government, and haven’t been for decades.

If we had a strong executive branch right now, we’d have already threatened to launch an FTC inquiry to break up Amazon and or nationalize SpaceX in response, merited or not.

The pure shock of the prospect of breaking them up would spook investors, tank their stock, put both CEOs on the defensive, and force them back in line, and everything would get resolved nicely with a face to face meeting and a handshake.

Whether it’s merited or not is not the point. Purely from a governance standpoint, as a citizen I hate to see corporate interests trying and succeeding to usurp government and societal norms.

Sometimes examples need to be made so others know not to make the same mistake.

Been to a few destination weddings (Mediterranean coast, India, Montana), and I think they’re the most fun, by far.

All 3 of them being for close friends and family, I have come to understand the expectation to be:

If it’s too much, or you don’t want to travel that far, or you’re busy— no worries! If you do, great, we invited you because we want to celebrate with you too, so why not make a big trip of it?

And then usually followed by a more casual reception closer to home for those family and friends who wanted to make it but couldn’t for whatever reason.

Police will forcefully evict you from a home. They will not guard the entrance to a restaurant and refuse entry to the owners until they pay their servers stolen wages/tips.

TIL, wow. Thanks for clarifying.

Regardless, given the fact they were close / within the same order of magnitude as Figma, it's interesting that the prospect of them IPOing is apparently considered a nuclear option.

?

An IPO allows every employee and shareholder to be as liquid as they like, and optimize to your individual tax and risk situation.

An exit is a one time thing. At most, you get to elect how much cash and how much converted stock you want. More likely, the company decides what that breakdown is.

Yes, this sucks for employees in the short term who thought their equity was potentially worth 2x what it is (and more importantly, liquid!). But also, if their numbers are good enough to plausibly command that price, it’s probably better for everyone, employees included in the long run, to go public? And not via SPAC, but via a real IPO.

Looking back, I think this ZIRP phenomenon of PE and VC was unhealthy (remember crypto??), unrealistic, and ultimately only benefitted a few founders, some employees, and mostly VC firms making paper gains by marking up SoftBank-esque valuations that no one actually believed.

We’re forgetting that all of FAANG IPOd when they too were much less than $20 billion. Maybe it’s time for the next generation of software companies to take control of their own destiny rather than wait for a golden parachute to buy them out.

Separate any discussion about the "tone" of the article, could someone who is better at reading between the lines better than I explain the changes to Out-Of App Store payments?

Is it a 10-max 20% fee to Apple, no matter the distributor, in the EU? Or are those rules only for the App Store, and anything else won't be touched by commissions to Apple?

It’s actually in LA now, which to me is a testament to its ability

That’s actually really helpful context, and absolutely swayed the needle from “no track record vaporware company salesman” to “maybe he actually has the experience to pull this off”

As an early employee at a startup from seed through a healthy Series B last year, I would have serious concerns about the company’s bookkeeping and how-up-to-date the shareholder information is if it were kept in an excel spread sheet on Google drive.

Carta and Pulley, etc. do a solve a valuable concern here for non-executives who are compensated with stock options and want to keep track of stock vesting, exercises, and shares in a transparent way, I’d say.

That's what makes them an important check on the state -- if they solely existed in a vacuum than what would speaking truth to power entail?