You're making a veritable crap-ton of assumptions here. Happy to talk about specific concerns, but not if you're going in to this with guns blazing looking for a witch to burn.
I'm curious how it works from a technical standpoint. If they invest, do they not own shares of the company, and then during the sale the shares are sold, did they just gift the shares back to you personally? Does that have tax implications?
Investment vehicle was a SAFE. They basically cancelled the SAFE as part of the deal. We've had carryover losses for years, so from a tax perspective, there was no hit on either side.
Now that you mention it, you're right, maybe some of that extra $300k went to the employees? I don't know because I wasn't in the room. I'm curious how much money employees got, and why $3.7 million was enough when $2.9 wasn't.
As for $3.7 vs $2.9...that was basically the number that, to oversimplify, would roughly give the outcome I wanted for "retirement" when it comes to investment interest over the next 50 years.
Basically, it's the number I felt comfortable with to not instantly feel like I needed to get back to work in a few years.
> We aren’t spending Silicon Valley-amounts on salaries, but we’re certainly not on the low end. From the perspective wanting my team to love where they work and not have to worry about money, I’m very happy with the salaries everyone gets.
For a few years before I sold my small (UK) company, our employment contracts had a bonus clause in. It guaranteed a bonus payout from a pool of 5% of any future sale, based on a multiple of years service (up to 5) and salary at the time of sale.
We sold for a similar sum and the bonuses were pretty small by SV standards - a bit more than £20,000 for a few, down to a few £00 for people who had just joined (maybe 50% annual salary for a few).
Me & my partner had a fishy earnout clause over 12 months, but I got us pleasantly fired after 3. Half the staff got made redundant after 6, which I don't believe was a surprise to any of them. Nobody buys a business for its cosy culture, or sells one expecting it to stay.
I think it's right for founders to be up-front about the likelihood and consequences of an exit, which is why we put it in our employment contract. But IMO more than 10% would be very generous for these ordinary private buyouts at 4-5× profit - no rocket ship valuations. At least that's clearer and more certain (and less tax efficient) than the kinds of games people play with options & rounds of funding.
UK tech companies, salaries & employee expectations are a whole different world from what's discussed here. Maybe Baremetrics was closer to that world than SV.
(In another life I wish I'd looked into what our old customers Torchbox did last year which is form an employee-owned trust and sell to that - https://torchbox.com/blog/not-selling-up/ )
I got an incredible place to work for over 5 years, for an amazing company, and an even more amazing boss. I got paid well for it, and I also got a nice payout when the company sold. Don't worry about the employees :)
ccmcarey|5 years ago
Shpigford|5 years ago
pc86|5 years ago
Shpigford|5 years ago
As for $3.7 vs $2.9...that was basically the number that, to oversimplify, would roughly give the outcome I wanted for "retirement" when it comes to investment interest over the next 50 years.
Basically, it's the number I felt comfortable with to not instantly feel like I needed to get back to work in a few years.
hajimemash|5 years ago
high_derivative|5 years ago
ceejayoz|5 years ago
> We aren’t spending Silicon Valley-amounts on salaries, but we’re certainly not on the low end. From the perspective wanting my team to love where they work and not have to worry about money, I’m very happy with the salaries everyone gets.
mattbee|5 years ago
We sold for a similar sum and the bonuses were pretty small by SV standards - a bit more than £20,000 for a few, down to a few £00 for people who had just joined (maybe 50% annual salary for a few).
Me & my partner had a fishy earnout clause over 12 months, but I got us pleasantly fired after 3. Half the staff got made redundant after 6, which I don't believe was a surprise to any of them. Nobody buys a business for its cosy culture, or sells one expecting it to stay.
I think it's right for founders to be up-front about the likelihood and consequences of an exit, which is why we put it in our employment contract. But IMO more than 10% would be very generous for these ordinary private buyouts at 4-5× profit - no rocket ship valuations. At least that's clearer and more certain (and less tax efficient) than the kinds of games people play with options & rounds of funding.
UK tech companies, salaries & employee expectations are a whole different world from what's discussed here. Maybe Baremetrics was closer to that world than SV.
(In another life I wish I'd looked into what our old customers Torchbox did last year which is form an employee-owned trust and sell to that - https://torchbox.com/blog/not-selling-up/ )
Shpigford|5 years ago
Scottymeuk|5 years ago