One thing to keep in mind, with something like this, employees' stock is almost certainly worth $0. There will likely be some sort of retention plan for some set of employees, but their stock in GA probably won't be worth anything. The founders will likely have some sort of bonus, and the investors will make some money (not home-run money, but money). I guess they deserve a congrats, but to me it's worth remembering that most likely employees, who viewed their stock options as a part of their compensation, will be left with nothing but a thank you.
"the main ones you care about are: revenue, expenses, total burn and cash in the bank"
That's part of it, but not all of it. Total number of outstanding shares (including warrantable shares!) can change the complexion of things a lot. And then there's the question of preference -- deals that a company made years ago can make for a big difference in share value.
Unless a company has an incredibly clean cap table, a rank-and-file employee will never really know how much their shares are worth until they are either worthless, or have a cash-in-hand buyer. What you're talking about is the general case of "things are moving in a pretty good direction", and that's important. But to really gauge value of a stock option is much, much more complex (and is constantly changing!). Even if an employee were able to come to a reasonable estimate of common stock value, one bad month can wipe that away (an emergency $5m round to make payroll? a loan backed by stock? a long-term lease backed by stock?).
"This is one area that YC has a strong incentive to act in, but hasn't."
This is an interesting thing to consider. If you look at the current president of YC (sama), at least from an outsider's perspective, he's the beneficiary of exactly the type of behavior you're trying to get away from. Based on his company's exit, he is now a VC, but his company was acquired for essentially what it raised, meaning the employees' stock was likely worthless. I have absolutely nothing personal against sama, but let's remember that YC doesn't exist as a charity, it's a business.
Man we are such cattle in this topic. If employees could publicly sell their stock, employees would share information constantly about things like this.
I cant imagine one measure increasing salaries and efficiency more than allowing employees to trade stock.
"but let's remember that YC doesn't exist as a charity, it's a business."
But let's also remember that the people running YC are adults, fully capable of telling right from wrong, and fully capable of being held responsible for their actions. Being "a business" is no more of an excuse for their actions than "following orders" is.
Being able to tell right from wrong, and acting on knowing something you're doing is wrong are different things. It is much easier to do something you know is wrong, when you stand to benefit to the tune of a few dozen million dollars.
Just to play devil's advocate on this, the money in the stock market (i.e. any stock transaction outside of a public offering) is generally not being invested in companies that actually build things, it's getting stored.
Hm? In the stock market, you pay a current stockholder for their share(s). The company sees no money from the transaction. It sounds like what you're thinking of is banking, which is something different.
I was mostly thinking about brokers. If I buy stock and hold it in my brokerage account, doesn't the brokerage use that money and stock to generate even more wealth? For example, they might loan my stock to somebody that wants to short that company.
incorrect. the company sees money from the transaction in several indirect ways. the existence of the market is what enabled the company to go public in the first place.
A different way to look at it might be that in most cases, an illegal deed might be overlooked simply because someone didn't have the funds to see it through the court system. It's one thing if someone is funding endless lawsuits just to drive someone out of business, it's another for someone like Hogan to have a legitimate case, and for Thiel to fund his lawsuit. Thiel's funding of the case did not influence the judgement against Gawker, it simply allowed it to proceed further than if Hogan ran out of money.
I agree with what I think you're saying, that we should be careful about allowing someone to sue someone out of business simply out of spite; however, I think there's something to be said for someone with deeper pockets funding a legitimate suit. It might be comparable to things that the EFF funds, or that the ACLU takes on -- they have deeper pockets, and can take the financial hit that someone with a legitimate claim may not be able to take.
Imagine if Gawker published the same thing of some average middle-class person. They can't afford a high-priced lawyer, so likely Gawker gets away with something that, if it went to court, they would lose. In this case, the bully ran into someone who actually could fight back. As far as I know, Thiel didn't fund endless lawsuits just hoping to run them out of money. He funded a legitimate lawsuit that ended up with Gawker being found in the wrong for.
There's a systemic problem here, independent of the Thiel/Bollinger/Gawker case.
"Equality before the law" is supposed to be a fundamental value in America and most Western common-law countries. It's the underpinning behind much of our economic system, which is based on the idea that everybody's welfare is improved if people can independently make contracts with each other. If it turns out that peoples' welfare is not improved, they can sue for damages, and the court system will right the externality.
This assumption does not hold when the vast majority of people harmed cannot afford to sue.
Your last paragraph is a good illustration of the problem, and I think that's the point the grandparent post was making. In this case, it may've been a good thing for justice that Gawker pissed off the wrong billionaire. But it's a terrible system where only the organizations that piss off billionaires get slapped, and the only way to achieve justice is to have a billionaire on your side.
Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this. We've already tried a bunch, with public defenders and Miranda rights and continent legal fees and class action lawsuits and pro bono work. But the cost of a court case keeps spiraling upwards, and it's soon reaching the level where only big corporations and wealthy individuals can afford them. And non-capitalist countries are even worse off: in many of them, you need a personal connection to a powerful person to get a fair judgment.
> Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this.
the solution is to take the economic incentives out of lawsuits (the legal industry is a pure economic cost, so an added perk is a more productive economy). some random ideas:
* make public law schools free and disband the various bar associations (increase competition/lower barriers to entry)
* make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
* limit the length of lawsuits to 3 months total (limits legal costs)
* make judges prefer non-monetary compensation (like volunteer work).
> make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
My issue with this is, 3 months from actual harm, or realization of harm? There just seem to be a lot of cases where harm does not show themselves immediately, but may take a few years to appear.
yes, there's unlikely a perfect solution, especially not one that comes out of 5 minutes of musing on it.
injuries involving bodily harm (assault, murder, etc.) might require more time, and financial crimes might take years to uncover, as you point out. but the underlying idea would be to make people act on injury quickly so that justice is delivered while memories and evidence are fresh (lowering costs) and deterrence is more immmediate and visible.
I agree that your point has merit. It's difficult to work out where the middle ground is, or whether "billionaires get to choose who sees their day in court" is better or worse than "poor people don't get their day in court" (they feel similar).
At the least, it would be good if those funding these cases had to make that fact public - Thiel only admitted that he was funding Hogan's case after journalists uncovered it. If he was campaigning on the side of truth and righteousness I can't see any reason why he wouldn't say as much (like the ACLU does).
Gawker didn't go after the average person, they very specifically went after a billionaire, Peter Thiel.
Then after that, Hulk Hogan filed a lawsuit because he got caught saying super racist things against African Americans on tape and Thiel secretly funds that lawsuit.
Does this make Thiel, by extension, somewhat racist considering he clearly had no qualms funding this lawsuit?[1] He's also a well-known Trump supporter, go figure lol
Call me crazy, but this seems very counter to where Silicon Valley wants to be and Silicon Valley values.
He's also considered a pretty well-known VC in the area. It's not hard to figure out why SV has so many diversity problems, when you have people like Thiel hailed as their leader.
I am not from your tech utopia, but i get the feeling that your so called "values" are more to blame for the wealth disparity than any single actor, regardless of their net worth. Assuming you live in SV, you are the folks that moved there, get paid obscene money to wrangle 1s and 0s, drive up the property value, and demand changes to the community to suit your tastes. When you were boarding your chartered bus to get you safely to the Green Zone, did you think you were part of the solution? I can think of 1 famous conservative VC (not my world so there are presumably more) and maybe 2 companies that make some claim to be, or are labeled as, conservative. The vast majority of the SV tech crowd and companies are liberals, and your Bernie T-shirt doesn't make you an "ally". Be honest with yourself: SV companies generate spam email, dump tons of thermal excess into the environment, and gentrify neighborhoods. Acting like you are somehow a different breed, and not a parasitic community (i know that term seems negative or besmirching but i mean it in its purely biological form), is something no one else is falling for. I realize this is an emotional rant that brushes with broad strokes, but i am pretty tired of West Coast folks acting like everything was fine before Trump and conservatives are backwards racists incapable of espousing compassion or modernity. That isn't an excuse, it is an explanation.
I think that this is a natural consequence of a world in which it's impossible to have a dialogue about some things. There are some topics in which it's essentially impossible to have a reasoned discussion about things that we disagree over.
This article talks about one: it's impossible to have this discussion with most people (including friends and family) because as soon as someone questions the generally accepted opinion, they're put on the defensive (in this case: "OMG why would you defend a molester?"), and the entire discussion becomes one of trying to defend yourself, and not about what you're trying to discuss.
The same thing happened with the Googler who questioned the idea of whether the tactics used for trying to improve Google's male-vs-female pay discrepancies. Instead of anyone responding to points he made in any sort of rational way, the discussion was immediately turned into "how can you defend someone who says women are worse than men?" -- not at all the case, but a quick way to avoid a factual discussion by pigeon-holing a person who dares to deviate from the generally accepted opinion.
This has also spread to politics: it's impossible to have any sort of reasoned debate about "hey, maybe <insert your favorite politician here> isn't literally the devil across the board" -- the conversation immediately becomes one of trying to undermine the person ("OMG I can't believe you're defending Franken, a man who has assaulted women!").
It also happens when people try to debate things like whether the "Yes means yes" laws are useful, reasonable or effective; I've never seen a reasonable discussion about this (online or in real life), because if anyone questions it, they're immediately on the defensive, trying to argue that no, they're not defending rapists, and no they're not against a safe environment for women. Politically, it's brilliant marketing, because there is absolutely no way to argue against it without being immediately pigeonholed as a rape-defender, and then spending all of your time trying to dig out of a hole that you've been put into.
It's unhealthy, and I think leads to echo chambers -- no one dares to voice an opinion unless they know people will agree with them. And this ultimately makes the problem worse, I think, because without a reasonable dialogue about issues, and without being able to accept the fact that people may have logical reasons to disagree with you, I don't really understand how things will get any better.
Isn't the point of an IPO generally to raise funds? In this case, it's just allowing people to sell their shares to the public, right? From the company standpoint, this is almost certainly a negative: additional oversight & reporting to do, no funds raised. I guess a positive is that shareholders can cash out, but as an investor, isn't that a giant red flag?
I guess as an investor, I don't see why I'd buy Spotify shares from an existing shareholder -- my "investment" is not going to the company, it's a bit like buying shares on the market of a mature company, except Spotify isn't that -- it's a money-hole with a highly questionable future. Is there any reason for someone to buy existing shares to expect things to turn around? They aren't getting a capital infusion, it's business as usual except with the additional burden of being a public company.
One advantage a new investor has over someone who provided Spotify with Seed/Series A is greater diversification. Suppose I'm a VC that invested in Spotify, it succeeded and my 20 other seed investments all failed. My retirement wealth is entirely dependent on it's success in the future - your comment outlines why this is risky. Since I am risk averse, I can sell this to a pension fund who will keep it as 1% of their total holdings and we can both be better off, even if we have the same view of the company's likely success in the future.
Of course, if everyone has too optimistic a view on Spotify's future success (could well be the case, I don't have an informed opinion) then buying the stock is a bad idea. But there is not necessarily anything sinister going on when founders/early investors cash out. From Spotify's point of view, they have an inventive to keep these people happy, balanced against the greater regulatory/oversight costs that you highlight.
I don't see how this is a negative signaling issue. When you buy Apple Stock it's not from Apple.
Spotify is going public largely due to terms they agreed to in previous funding rounds, but they are probably not raising money because they either don't need it or believe they can get better funding terms.
If anything, this should be a signal that the company thinks the public stock is under-priced.
How are these two comparable? When Apple IPO'd back in 1980 you were buying stock from Apple.
>"...but they are probably not raising money because they either don't need it or believe they can get better funding terms."
They lose hundreds of millions of dollars year over year, why would they not need it? Also why would they believe that they can get better funding now when they resorted to selling debt with unfavorable term intheir last round of financing?
An IPO provides 1) a fundraising opportunity 2) a liquidity event 3) an opportunity to fulfill contractual obligations
One of the conditions of their recent debt financing was that they IPO within a certain time frame. If they believe that they don't need additional funding at the moment or can get better terms then they are simply fulfilling criteria #2 and #3 with their unique IPO. I imagine Spotify can get decent debt financing terms b/c they have such a steady and predictable source of revenue (though not necessarily profit).
> One of the conditions of their recent debt financing was that they IPO within a certain time frame
Spotify is not IPO’ing. They are direct listing their stock. Because of a simple drafting error on part of TPG et al Spotify is side-stepping the bulk of the delayed IPO penalties.
This is exactly why they are direct listing. TPG is screaming bloody murder but then again they claim to be the masters of structuring complex deals so they can’t claim that a startup snuck in a loophole under them.
>" I imagine Spotify can get decent debt financing terms b/c they have such a steady and predictable source of revenue (though not necessarily profit)."
Again if this true, why would they raise a billion dollars in convertible debt?
Spotify is a European company, but in the US there are limits to the numbers of shareholders allowed in private companies. Something similar may apply here.
>"Luckily humans have developed a great coordination mechanism called 'democracy' and we can use it when coordination in the market place has failed."
I find that sort of thinking pretty scary. I'm incredibly hesitant to expand the purview of the government into whether products should succeed or fail. It sounds like what you're saying is that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, so we should enact government regulations to think for them. This is something markets are very good at, as others have stated. Expanding the government's role in things should be an absolute last resort, to me.
If people are willing to trade their personal information for cheap, cool gadgets, then who is the government to step in to say "no, you're not allowed to do that"? By the same token, you could flip it around: could the government step in and say "you don't want this gadget that's always listening to you, but you have to have it because some group you don't agree with tells you to"?
I want to be careful not to go too slippery slope, but should the government step in and shut down Google, because they exist to serve ads? What about Facebook? It's the same thing there: people trade their personal information for perceived value in other places (Facebook: keeping in touch with people, Google as access to information). Should the government be the ones to decide who should be allowed to make decisions about their information?
It's scary because once the government gets to decide what people should and shouldn't be allowed to use, or what products should or shouldn't succeed, it can be used as an incredibly powerful tool. To me, a useful way to think of government is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
Government has been doing this for a long time already. To see it in action, just try to buy some thalidomide, or book a flight with an airline that only requires 20 hours of training for their pilots, or buy a new car with no air bags. The question of whether the government should decide what people should be allowed to use or what products should succeed was answered a long time ago with “yes, it should.” The only question here is what side of the line this particular product falls on.
If people are willing to trade their personal information for cheap, cool gadgets, then who is the government to step in to say "no, you're not allowed to do that"? By the same token, you could flip it around: could the government step in and say "you don't want this gadget that's always listening to you, but you have to have it because some group you don't agree with tells you to"?
Third question: should you be allowed to trade my personal information for cheap cool gadgets?
>It sounds like what you're saying is that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves
In the prisoner's dilemma are the prisoners stupid? No, they're actually defined as rational. What makes them come to their collectively poor outcome is that they have no way to act collectively, they require coordination. Those prisoners could be smarter than you and me, they're still trapped by the rules of the system they exist in.
>If people are willing to trade their personal information for cheap, cool gadgets, then who is the government to step in to say "no, you're not allowed to do that"? By the same token, you could flip it around: could the government step in and say "you don't want this gadget that's always listening to you, but you have to have it because some group you don't agree with tells you to"?
Our own government has some problems with this but since we're being a bit high-minded here, let's ask ourselves what a democratic government ideally is. It's just a way for individuals to coordinate with each other.
Prisoner's Dilemma again. By market mechanisms, we're going to jail for two years. We may meet some strange definition of freedom but if we're both rational then we know we will never realize the option of serving lesser sentences. To me though that isn't real freedom so we can see then that a coordination mechanism isn't here to curtail freedom, it's here to grant it (it lets us both choose to remain silent.)
I believe the same things about markets/government. Why should we purposefully handicap ourselves to the individual realm stuck with Echo with ads when we can go to the collective realm to grant ourselves a better outcome.
>I want to be careful not to go too slippery slope, but should the government step in and shut down Google, because they exist to serve ads? What about Facebook?
If the people collectively decide that then yes.
>It's scary because once the government gets to decide what people should and shouldn't be allowed to use, or what products should or shouldn't succeed, it can be used as an incredibly powerful tool.
Well here let me rework this:
It's scary because once the people get to decide what people should and shouldn't be allowed to use, or what products should or shouldn't succeed, it can be used as an incredibly powerful tool.
You're right that is powerful, we should have that power.
>To me, a useful way to think of government is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
Let me rework this also:
To me, a useful way to think of markets is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
I'm not sure how the Prisoner's Dilemma applies here? I agree that consumers should be educated and have the ability to make informed decisions; in many ways, this is what makes a market more "fair": make sure that consumers have access to information, and let them make the best decisions they can.
> I believe the same things about markets/government. Why should we purposefully handicap ourselves to the individual realm stuck with Echo with ads when we can go to the collective realm to grant ourselves a better outcome.
This is something I think we disagree on: I don't see this as a handicap at all. I also disagree that the better outcome is to grow the government's role in something like this. To me, this is a case where the so-called "invisible hand of the market" is the way to go: ensure that consumers have access to the information they need, and let consumers make the best decisions for themselves.
> If the people collectively decide that then yes.
I think we have to be very careful about how this is used; people collectively decide silly things all the time ("Pink Slime" comes to mind, for some reason), and we have to be very careful about how we encode things into law. Once the government is responsible for something, it's hard to walk back on that. Leaving things to the market leaves things in a more fluid state, in my opinion.
> To me, a useful way to think of markets is as a very sharp knife: it can be extremely useful in the right situations, but you can really hurt yourself if you're not careful.
This may be true to some degree, but it aligns pretty well with people's changing opinions and wants/needs. If we're careful about some things (e.g. monopolies, access to information, etc -- things that allow markets to work efficiently), we can avoid having to bring out the sledgehammer when it's not needed. Some of the early 20th century government involvements led to humanitarian crises (the Communist revolutions in China and Russia); that's not to say that governments necessarily lead to the worst situations, just that sometimes markets are better at things than government involvement. This is a case where I believe this to be especially true.
>I'm not sure how the Prisoner's Dilemma applies here? I agree that consumers should be educated and have the ability to make informed decisions; in many ways, this is what makes a market more "fair": make sure that consumers have access to information, and let them make the best decisions they can.
But that's the point of the prisoner's dilemma. Individuals who are educated, can make informed decisions, have access to information about the results of their decision will always make a decision that isn't the best decision they can make. What the prisoner's dilemma reveals is that the only way to beat the game is through a coordination mechanism. Nothing else will ever help.
>This is something I think we disagree on: I don't see this as a handicap at all.
Hmm so in the prisoner's dilemma you don't see the prisoners without coordination as handicapped? To me it's obvious. Prisoners with coordination realize the best overall outcome, prisoner's without coordination are never able to realize that outcome. Seems straightforwardly handicapped to me.
>To me, this is a case where the so-called "invisible hand of the market" is the way to go: ensure that consumers have access to the information they need, and let consumers make the best decisions for themselves.
I'm providing you with examples where the invisible hand doesn't work the way we like to pretend. The hand is guided towards overall societal benefit by individually selfish actions. What I'm talking about are cases where individually selfish actions lead the invisible hand to overall societal detriment. And that in those instances we need government as a way to coordinate together so that we may reposition the invisible hand where we desire.
>Leaving things to the market leaves things in a more fluid state, in my opinion.
Fluid isn't necessarily good however. We will persist 'fluidly' with Echo with ads until we get the government to act and then we will exist 'statically' with Echo without ads. I suppose I'm fine with that static-ness.
>Some of the early 20th century government involvements led to humanitarian crises (the Communist revolutions in China and Russia);
You're being a bit funny with 'government involvement' here. Maybe there should be some corollary to Godwin's Law where the first one to compare a government program to Mao loses. Anyhow, I'm not talking about seizing the means of production, I'm talking about regulating existing markets.
>that's not to say that governments necessarily lead to the worst situations, just that sometimes markets are better at things than government involvement.
There's also plenty of instances where government involvement is better than markets. That's the case I'm making - essentially that we need government regulation as a way of reigning back the invisible hand when it goes awry aka smart homes that secretly advertise to you.
I thought Prisoner's Dilemma was more about the inability to have good information: the prisoners can't communicate with each other, and therefore have imperfect information about their decision. To me, this supports my argument: if the prisoners are free to communicate and gather information as they see fit, they can make a good decision. What it sounds like you're saying is that the government should tell the prisoners what to do. I prefer the former, because I think it keeps the responsibility still on the prisoner ("consumer" in our case).
You keep using the word "coordination", and I guess I just don't see it applying in the way I think that you mean. There are other, perhaps better, ways to coordinate than governmental intervention. You've said that boycotts don't work, but I'd say that if the market doesn't want a product, it will fail; why does a government have to enforce that? A boycott may fail because a loud minority isn't representative of the overall market; isn't that the behavior you want?
You may find the references to some communist revolutions distasteful, but I think it's an appropriate comparison in that folks see government as the solution to a problem that markets solve really well. I specifically didn't say that what you're espousing will lead to 50m deaths, but I do think it's a useful tool for showing where government can take on too big of a role with regards to things that markets are very efficient at doing themselves.
>"I suppose I'm fine with that static-ness."
Isn't Hacker News full of people that explicitly disagree with this? That static laws are a big tool for incumbent companies to build their moat, and entrepreneurs try to break those down in ways that are intended to be better for everyone. Maybe you disagree (which I respect), but in many ways, static laws look good on the surface but have real downsides in the long run.
> aka smart homes that secretly advertise to you.
I don't think that these things should be done secretly. I think companies should have to make this information available to consumers, and I think the government should enforce this to some degree (e.g. if a company is recording my phone calls to send back to their headquarters, absolutely it should be known).
> I thought Prisoner's Dilemma was more about the inability to have good information: the prisoners can't communicate with each other
That sounds like the Byzantine Generals Problem. Prisoners can communicate all they like, it just doesn't really matter what they agree at the end of the day.
>I thought Prisoner's Dilemma was more about the inability to have good information: the prisoners can't communicate with each other, and therefore have imperfect information about their decision.
Even if the prisoners are allowed to communicate, if there is no underlying coordination mechanism, some binding agreement, a punishment for breaking the agreement, etc. then the default state is still defection.
>What it sounds like you're saying is that the government should tell the prisoners what to do. I prefer the former, because I think it keeps the responsibility still on the prisoner ("consumer" in our case).
I think this is the part that most people (and maybe you) get stuck on because the basic idea is that you give up one freedom to gain another. The prisoners are stuck. Until each one tells the other "if you squeal on me, my brother will kill you on the outside." Now, where they were once trapped by the rules of the game a new rule has been added. Do the prisoners gain or lose freedom when they threaten each other? The answer is neither because they never had any to begin with. In both scenarios they are trapped into picking a specific choice by their own rationality. The difference is that pre-threat they were trapped into a suboptimal decision and now they are trapped into an optimal decision. Coordination is the only thing that mattered here and it allowed everyone to benefit.
Now if we move this analogy over to government intervention in markets, which component of the analogy is 'government'? Easy, it's the mutual threat. The government isn't some outside entity and it isn't telling the prisoners what to do, it's the agreement between the prisoners and it's the enforcement mechanism of that agreement. The government here isn't reducing freedom (or increasing it) on an individual level but on a societal level it's granting us the freedom to move to more optimal outcomes.
>You've said that boycotts don't work, but I'd say that if the market doesn't want a product, it will fail
That's just not true. The prisoners want shorter jail terms, yet they'll fail to get them. Where you and I are clashing is the difference between individuals and society.
>why does a government have to enforce that?
Because otherwise it won't happen. There has to be an enforcement mechanism to for coordination to work. Otherwise defecting will dominate.
>You may find the references to some communist revolutions distasteful, but I think it's an appropriate comparison in that folks see government as the solution to a problem that markets solve really well.
Like I said, see Mao's Law. It's absolutely distasteful and not an appropriate comparison at all.
Besides we're specifically talking about problems that markets don't solve.
>Maybe you disagree (which I respect), but in many ways, static laws look good on the surface but have real downsides in the long run.
I do, but if you look at what I said you can see that my 'static' scenario and my 'fluid' scenario are both equally static. In one we're static because we're stuck by government regulation, in the other we're static because we're stuck by market rules (we can't coordinate.)
>I don't think that these things should be done secretly. I think companies should have to make this information available to consumers, and I think the government should enforce this to some degree (e.g. if a company is recording my phone calls to send back to their headquarters, absolutely it should be known).
You know who else liked government enforcement? Hitler. This is an appropriate comparison btw.
One thing to keep in mind, with something like this, employees' stock is almost certainly worth $0. There will likely be some sort of retention plan for some set of employees, but their stock in GA probably won't be worth anything. The founders will likely have some sort of bonus, and the investors will make some money (not home-run money, but money). I guess they deserve a congrats, but to me it's worth remembering that most likely employees, who viewed their stock options as a part of their compensation, will be left with nothing but a thank you.