Skip to content

Comment on 19 year old files S1 (IPO prospectus) to raise $12,500 for his beer pong company

Comments

I must say, it takes a certain kind of flair to conceive and implement a plan to take a sole-founder company that is only 3 months old public for the purpose of raising $12K in seed funding while incurring $9,700.90 in out-of-pocket expenses in the process (see Item 13 for an itemization) - an IPO that will net a best-case of $2,300 for a stock for which the offering entity disclaims that any public trading market may ever develop!

This reads like a parody of a typical public filing - every disclosure solemnly declares that the company has no assets, no experience, no prospects, and no future to speak of (other than what one might expect of a very young and very green founder who is 3 months into his first company). This is actually pretty funny - sort of like a po-faced guy intoning in mock seriousness about something he knows is wildly out of sync with reality but never letting on about it.

It must be quite a learning experience for the founder and that I assume is its sole point. Quite an amazing story.

What seems like a parody to you, seems like a pretty clever hack to me. The novelty of the making a beer pong company seems like the ultimate slap in the face to other public companies worrying about SOX compliance and such. I bet they make a lot of money from people willing to laugh at the idea and support their idea.

Reminds me of the homeless guys whose pitch is something like "I don't want money for food, I just want to buy beer". They expect the honesty to work, but personally, I think that if you want to get wasted on beer, you should get a job. So while the pitch is unique and honest, they aren't getting any of my money.

Yes, it is a pretty clever hack but one that reads like a parody (at least to a lawyer's eye, having read too much of the usual bloat that fills the S1 statements over the years).

By the way, the most priceless detail in the whole thing: SEC registration fee = $0.90 (Item 13).

Still it's an interesting question - can a small company go public? I vaguely remember there is a simplified procedure for companies with less than one million in revenue. How much pain is that exactly?

Love it. Interestingly enough there is a (somewhat useless) discussion on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/c6e49/a_girl_nam...) about a "bully who says he owns the right to "power hour" and is trying to shut [innocent site] down".

Why is the best-case $2,300? The stock could sell for any price if it's offered.

"The sales price to the public is fixed at $0.005 per share"

Maximum the ipo can bring in is $12,500. As noted above, expenses incurred by the ipo: $9700.90

And in the late 90s, investment banks would be taking this out on roadshows.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.