> There was even a second market offering to let Ryan sell enough shares to pay his taxes and maybe buy a nice house in South Park.
Who was buying the shares from Ryan in this secondary market?
> This is a problem that faces a lot of startups. We should all be more wary of information that's given out, and be more demanding of transparency. Learn a less from all of us PF employees: the more a company talks about their IPO, the less likely it's going to happen.
I generally agree, but no matter how much information is given out, if the last deal is done secretly and with bonuses and pre-arranged values, there is no amount of information that can protect you from that.
Fraud is hard to prove because it requires providing intention, but certainly some of the elements of fraud are present.
I don't remember who was buying, but I think it was literally on "Second Market" before they were acquired by NASDAQ (iirc)... I wanna say that was in the summer of 2015, and was the only official liquidity opportunity that was offered for employees, at least in the last few years that I was aware of. I know some of my colleagues got out with sharespost sales, but those were only the ones who had enough shares qualify for that sale (which, again screwing the lower compensated employees, wouldn't be the customer service teams).
In my mind, there's two things that should change: first, and most importantly, we need better protections for employees in these kinds of situations; second (and a distant second, but still salient since it's the only thing that you really can do to protect yourself), people should be more wary. I totally agree that you can't protect yourself from these kinds of deals done in secret. But, you can look for the kinds of warning signs and stay away.
I know people who were laid off during one of the multiple rounds of layoffs, and still went back to buy their shares. That's some strong Kool-aid, and it makes very little sense to me why one would do that in this context if they weren't being given some strong misinformation.
> There was even a second market offering to let Ryan sell enough shares to pay his taxes and maybe buy a nice house in South Park.
Who was buying the shares from Ryan in this secondary market?
> This is a problem that faces a lot of startups. We should all be more wary of information that's given out, and be more demanding of transparency. Learn a less from all of us PF employees: the more a company talks about their IPO, the less likely it's going to happen.
I generally agree, but no matter how much information is given out, if the last deal is done secretly and with bonuses and pre-arranged values, there is no amount of information that can protect you from that.