- Balance Sheet
- Posts
- Ride of your life
Ride of your life
🚨 On Tuesday, we wrote about the Zuck, and made the subject line “Dear Mark”. Unless you are also called Mark, this means that for two days Balance Sheet has been sitting in your junk folder. We’re really sorry about this, and hope today it’s rectified.
Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” He knew what we really wanted was cars. When Mark Zuckerberg asked Facebook users what they wanted, they said “Please stop selling my data.” But Zuckerberg knew what we really wanted was to press our eyeballs against screens and enter a kindergartener’s version of the Matrix where no one has any legs. Obviously, the stock is falling.
The lowdown
❌ Technology stocks fall as big tech misses earnings.
💸 Meta remains defiant on metaverse investment, as Reality Labs loses $3.7 billion.
🚰 Elon Musk visits Twitter headquarters ahead of deal consummation, carrying a sink.
Flex your finance muscle 💸💪
We continue to work our way through a VC term sheet.
Conversion/Auto-conversion
VCs are typically issued shares of preferred stock rather than common stock, which grants them certain rights. Typically, there exists a mechanism that allows preferred stockholders to convert their stock to common stock at a time of their choosing – known as optional conversion.
Auto-conversion, on the other hand, will automatically convert preferred stock to common stock upon the happening of a particular event – such as an IPO – if certain requirements are met. For example, a VC may only allow its stock to be converted if the IPO will guarantee a return of 3 x its initial investment. If this threshold is not met, then the VC effectively has a veto on the IPO.
Read more about what founders need to keep in mind with respect to conversions here.
Featured stories
Credit: LinkedIn
Peloton lures former Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy out of retirement
A proxy filing has revealed that Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy was lured out of retirement with a total package worth a possible $168 million. McCarthy took over in February after the resignation of former CEO and founder John Foley.
McCarthy served as Netflix’s CFO for nearly 12 years from 1999 to 2010. He also served as Spotify’s CFO from 2015 to 2020, which includes the period in which the company went public, pioneering the direct listing.
McCarthy receives a base salary of $1 million. The remainder of the $168 million package is made up of options vesting monthly over 4 years. The Peloton share price will need to reach $37.77 before these options are in the money. The stock last traded at $7.69 but traded at more than $160 at the height of the pandemic.
It will be an uphill battle on a stationary bike to return the stock to these levels. But the company has the support of Rishi Sunak, who likes to get on the bike at 6 AM.
The content we're consuming today
Off-balance sheet items
Silicon Valley – An hilarious 2014 comedy series about the Silicon Valley tech scene.