Hi! I'm working on https://UpdateMaker.com. UpdateMaker is a super-simple widget for delivering in-app updates and notifications to users.
As a dev, I always want to tell users about our latest updates, but making front-end updates requires a whole production deploy, and a backend notification service is a lot to set up. UpdateMaker makes it easy to manage updates without an engineering cycle.
UpdateMaker lets you copy-paste our widget into your website, and then you can push update notifications to your users. You can customize the look and feel, schedule updates, track user engagement, and make it conditional on pages the user might visit. We manage all the cookie-handling so the user only sees updates they haven't seen before. It's been super useful for us!
From there, UpdateMaker also automatically exports all your updates as a changelog that you can publish for your users or SEO :)
You're thinking about the wrong thing. It's not about salaries for staff. The fact that it's a non-profit means no corporate taxes. That's where the profits go into the pockets of management, practically.
I would guess that this is actually SBF acting through an accomplice. Of course everyone's going to look at SBF when asking where that final $400 million went. Right now he's on trial, in the courtroom, everyone sees him there -- perfect Alibi.
You could have reasonably said Ross Ulbricht was the main suspect in the theft of Silk Road bitcoins, but it turned out to be two FBI agents involved with the case.
We also had once an office admin stealing stuff. When we revoked his access cards and fire him, he came back the night with a different acces scard and stole more stuff and would pretend then that since his badge was revoked, it couldnt have been him in the first place
Again, why would he need to hack his own exchange if he is admin/ceo and has 'god mode' to just move funds from address A to B (one he knows the private key to and no paper trail) undetected?
This comment misunderstands how liq pref works. Liq pref is about the amount of money invested ($175M), not about the valuation. At a $975M exit and a par-for-the-course liq pref of 1.0, it is very likely that all shareholders will have made money on the exit.
Shareholders who got in before that last round, that is. Employees who joined in the last few years will likely have underwater options unless Loom internally repriced already-granted options.
Why are they underwater? The "value" of their options would have been the preferred share - common share price. So it would have been a fat haircut but likely still netted them some number > common share price, no?
At exit the preferred shares become common, and the common shares increase in value accordingly. I've seen even series E companies that kept their common share price to under 20% of the preferred share price. If you started on day X with a common share price of 20% of the last preferred share price, and the company was acquired on day X + 1 at a discount, say 60% of the last preferred share price after factoring in liquidation preferences, then your profit from the options is still 2x the strike price.
Loom is an odd case because the timing of their last round was simply perfect. It was announced in May 2021, which means the terms would've been set in Jan or Feb, when Tiger and other firms were on a rampage and competition to get into rounds was at its height. That last $130m has to have been on very favorable terms, not just the valuation but e.g. no crazy liquidation preference. So, unless Loom's founders made some inexplicably bad deals, I'd expect even recent hires to still make a little money. Nobody should be getting zeroed out.
As I mentioned in another comment -- no, their options will not be underwater, because the strike on their options is set by the 409A value, which will have been far less than 1.5B. It wouldn't be unusual to see a company that's got its preferred stock valued at 1.5B and its 409A at 400M.
Are you counting employees that joined after the 1.5B valuation?
I am sure they made money but not what was expected (exiting above 1.5B).
How are you determining par for the course liq preference of 1.0? Where does that data come from? I ask genuinely as the small sample of companies I know of personally have liq preferences greater than 1.
Liq pref > 1 was extremely uncommon in the last 5 years.
Employees who joined after the 1.5B valuation will have made money because the strike on their options is set by the 409A, which will have been far, far less than 1.5B. Preferred stock price is not the same as 409A common price.
if they had options, i.e the ability to purchase stock at, say, $10, but the company was sold with that stock being worth $9 only, then exercising those options would lose them money.
The "brain vs brawn" is one of the most misguiding stereotypes in our society, surely left over from an older time when training in one necessarily meant less in the other.
In practice, today it's all about discipline. Lots of very smart technologists or financiers are also in great physical shape. The two correlate. (And by extension, if you look at the demographics that are least physically fit, they also tend to be the least educated.)
Do you mean that you can be a "college athlete", that it, to play in a college's sports team, and it won't take much time or energy from you? You won't have to sacrifice anything?
Being fit does not equal being an athlete in my view, much like being literate does not equal being a writer.
As a dev, I always want to tell users about our latest updates, but making front-end updates requires a whole production deploy, and a backend notification service is a lot to set up. UpdateMaker makes it easy to manage updates without an engineering cycle.
UpdateMaker lets you copy-paste our widget into your website, and then you can push update notifications to your users. You can customize the look and feel, schedule updates, track user engagement, and make it conditional on pages the user might visit. We manage all the cookie-handling so the user only sees updates they haven't seen before. It's been super useful for us!
From there, UpdateMaker also automatically exports all your updates as a changelog that you can publish for your users or SEO :)