Ahhh good ol' Kulveer. Time to revisit my old comment from 292 days ago:
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As the first poster said, don't believe everything you read. The media is all about hype and thousandaires don't roll off the page.
The details: the acquisition price was $5 Million which was made up of $2 Million Cash and $3 Million Stock.
There were 3 founders, Harjeet Taggar, Kulveer Taggar, Patrick Collison. Each founder held 20.89% of the company at the time of sale. YCombinator held 4.38%. Paul Graham personally held 0.96%.
20.89% of $5 Million is $1,044,500. Of course they only have 40% of that in cash and the other 60% is in stock. The stock was $2.69 the day the deal closed. It's now trading at $2.40. If they still have their shares, they are worth 10% less which is a loss of $62,670.
That is all before tax. Factor in capital gains tax of 10-15% before the stock drop and you are already out of millionaire territory.
On an unrelated note, each of the founders are now making a base salary $100,000 at Communicate.com. This does not include bonuses, options, etc.
(I recall reading Kulveer saying this in own words in his blog, www.kulveer.co.uk, along with the advice PG gave them to keep going and not sell yet, but his blog seems to be down or has a problem so unfortunate I cannot add the source as a reference).
I'm not so sure - I think they timed it just right, when the market was at its most bullish (not too long after youtube).
The thing that also has to be pointed out for kulveer and harjeet is the difficulty of doing what they did when they had to regularly fly back to the uk because of visa restrictions. I think their commitment in that respect would be a big selling point for a buyer.
Comments
Ahhh good ol' Kulveer. Time to revisit my old comment from 292 days ago:
---- As the first poster said, don't believe everything you read. The media is all about hype and thousandaires don't roll off the page.
The details: the acquisition price was $5 Million which was made up of $2 Million Cash and $3 Million Stock.
There were 3 founders, Harjeet Taggar, Kulveer Taggar, Patrick Collison. Each founder held 20.89% of the company at the time of sale. YCombinator held 4.38%. Paul Graham personally held 0.96%.
20.89% of $5 Million is $1,044,500. Of course they only have 40% of that in cash and the other 60% is in stock. The stock was $2.69 the day the deal closed. It's now trading at $2.40. If they still have their shares, they are worth 10% less which is a loss of $62,670.
That is all before tax. Factor in capital gains tax of 10-15% before the stock drop and you are already out of millionaire territory.
On an unrelated note, each of the founders are now making a base salary $100,000 at Communicate.com. This does not include bonuses, options, etc.
Source: http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/cobrand/?doc=A-1108630-00011....
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So: Cash (40%): $1,044,500 * 40% = $417,800
Stock (60%): March 25, 2008- LIVC 2.69 $1,044,500 * 60% = $626,700 $626,700 / 2.69 = 232,974 Shares
January 23, 2009 - LIVC 0.41 232,974 * 0.41 = $95,519
"to dot-com millions in Silicon Valley - all in just over a year" - article
Yeah right. I hope he sold his shares in March, cause your stock is down 83% and that means he made barely over $500k, before tax!
This makes me more interested in how he was able to convince Sacca and Buchheit to be on board.
I believe they met Sacca at the 'Chris Sacca comes to Oxford' conference.
Also, what happened to the investment of 180,000 GBP?
It was probably spent on Boso. Look at boso.com, they had a big team.
They sold too early.
(I recall reading Kulveer saying this in own words in his blog, www.kulveer.co.uk, along with the advice PG gave them to keep going and not sell yet, but his blog seems to be down or has a problem so unfortunate I cannot add the source as a reference).
But $500K in a year is still good.
I'm not so sure - I think they timed it just right, when the market was at its most bullish (not too long after youtube). The thing that also has to be pointed out for kulveer and harjeet is the difficulty of doing what they did when they had to regularly fly back to the uk because of visa restrictions. I think their commitment in that respect would be a big selling point for a buyer.
You show a lot of interest in me.