shareholding

Yet another co-founder of hot tech start-up claiming he got unfairly kicked out

Except this time, that co-founder might actually have a case. Valley Wag is reporting that Douglas Warstler is suing Yik Yak’s two co-founders for excluding him out of Yik Yak. The basic story is that the three started a company with 1/3 ownership each that created and launched Yik Yak.

(Yik Yak is a location-based, anonymous chat app popular in schools. My start-up’s app, feecha, actually started out as something similar, so the fact that Yik Yak is more successful is a testament to the importance of execution. But that’s a story for another day.)

Two of Yik Yak’s co-founders graduated from university and moved to a different city while Warstler had a year left that he intended to complete. The two co-founders didn’t want a long distance, part-time situation and tried to buy him out. Warstler refused. And so the other two co-founders transferred Yik Yak to a new company and didn’t give Warstler any shares.

That’s what happened in a nutshell.

Typically, when these kinds of stories appear, my bias is with the remaining co-founders who actually built the business (e.g. Facebook, Snapchat). In this case however, my sympathies are with Warstler if what’s alleged is actually true.

Read Full Article

Google has more value than Microsoft, but Microsoft is more valuable than Google

There’s a story on TechCrunch today on how Microsoft’s market value exceeded Google’s market value. I don’t know if this is news, but I suppose it’s interesting to check in from time to time on how the public markets perceive the two tech giants.

What caught my eye were two comments from those claiming to be from two prestigious venture capital firms: Accel Partners and Silver Lake Partners.

Here’s an angry one from Han Lee, Accel Partners:

Dear writer, do you really not know the difference between market cap and enterprise value? Pathetic.

From Jeff Schnabel, Operating Executive at Silver Lake Partners:

Total enterprise value is a more accurate measure of a company’s value (market cap is only a piece of the puzzle – the value of the company’s publicly traded equity).

If you look at TEV, Google is still worth more than Microsoft ($306.4B vs. $290.4B)

What is Enterprise Value and how’s it different to Market Value you may ask? Finance people love to confuse lay people to make themselves look smarter, so let’s peel away the jargon.

Read Full Article