It looks like you don’t trust A16Z’s stated reasons:
1. They moved out of Delaware “due to recent actions by the Court of Chancery, which have injected an unprecedented level of subjectivity into judicial decisions, undermining the court’s reputation for unbiased expertise. This has introduced legal uncertainty into what was widely considered the gold standard of U.S. corporate law.”
“The foundation of Delaware’s historical reputation has been non-ideological, specialized business courts that have developed a robust body of case law around the so-called “business judgment rule”, legal shorthand for a (rebuttable) presumption borrowed from English common law that boards of directors act in good faith and with informed judgment when making business decisions. Over the years, the Delaware courts developed a limited number of objective, common sense exceptions to this general rule; however, recently, those exceptions have begun to swallow the rule. Director independence has been questioned in cases where the board has granted “moonshot” grants to exceptional founders, and in one notable case the court reprised the chorus from Hotel California by rejecting a board’s decision to move its place of incorporation out of Delaware (although it was later reversed by the Delaware Supreme Court). This has rightly caused tech startup founders to question the primacy of Delaware.
Although the Delaware Legislature has taken some exception to these developments, its actions fail to take full measure of the problem. In particular, Delaware courts can at times appear biased against technology startup founders and their boards. Litigation – even where successfully defeated – is costly and time consuming, particularly for the tech startups that need every penny they raise to build innovative companies. The resulting legal uncertainty is a real cause for concern for entrepreneurs and their professional investors who often sit on their boards. As a result, many of the companies we fund and the entrepreneurs that we talk to are taking a second look at whether they should incorporate in other jurisdictions, prompted by the departure from Delaware of significant technology companies like Dropbox, Tripadvisor and Tesla.”
2. They chose NV, because “In contrast, Nevada has taken significant steps in establishing a technical, non-ideological forum for resolving business disputes,” and “has historically been a business friendly state with fair and balanced regulatory policies.“
“Nevada has taken a different path, choosing instead to codify the business judgement rule in statute, eliminating the ability of judges to modify or change the rule. In addition, the Nevada legislature recently passed two measures that take significant steps toward upgrading its existing business courts into specialized venues to resolve complex commercial disputes. AB 239 provides for a waiver of jury trials in civil cases, while AJR 8 calls for the adoption of a constitutional amendment to permit the direct appointment of business court judges by the Governor, rather than through the current system of elections. Both measures passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the state Assembly and Senate, receiving the support of Nevada’s Republican Governor and Democratic Secretary of State, Speaker of the Assembly, and Senate Majority leader. While more work remains to be done on reforming Nevada’s business courts, we think that these measures represent a critical step in making Nevada a destination of choice for entrepreneurs.”
Taxation is mentioned nowhere.
What are the bases for your distrust in the stated reasoning?
Curious, what was doing your friend, who is ready to take over and lead? Why not switch sides, take over his functions, and offer your stake for sale during the next raise at that valuation?
Why not offer your stake to the company’s investors at the previous valuation?
A pivot, by definition, means turning away from the original course of the business.
If you were really motivated by the previous goal, and you're disinterested in the new goal, why stick around?
I've seen companies pivot from "we are going to solve plastic trash recycling using automation" to "we are a trading platform for bales of plastic trash" - much more achievable, but much less interesting.
Wilkie Collins was well known and quite popular in the Soviet Union as we’re some other American authors: o’Henry, .... Dreiser, as I discovered not well known in America.
Could you through in a few more names please? Would be interested to check what I’ve been missing. Thanks!
There is no risk in terms of taking too much CO2 out of the atmosphere. Over the last couple of hundred years, humans have put several trillion extra tonnes of the stuff in (by burning material sequestered over millions of years). Further, this tech carbon neutral, not carbon negative. The advantage is that when the fuel is used, it's just putting CO2 back into the air that was there before, not adding more.
Hopefully this kind of thing, in addition to switching the electricity grid to zero emissions tech will allow us to halt global warming where it's at.
I wish American “scientists” stop misleading people. The amount of “scientific” nonsense I heard is stunning. Growing up in the culture, I do not recall a single story where Rusalka was threatening to humans. Rusalkas are beautiful young women with fishtails living in seas, lakes, etc. Vodyanoi, -not Vodnik -, a male creature living in swamps, may be. Though in a famous animated cartoon, Vodyanoi was a very kind creature dreaming about flying https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VxRhYbqiM. Baba Yaga, an old cranky woman, who lived in a forest in a house which stood on chicken feet, certainly. But in the same cartoon Baba Yaga was quite attractive too. In Russian mythology/ fairytales there have been a plenty of creatures to scary kids.
Once I turned around a startup from about to go under to s profitable one. We restructured every piece of the value chain, but not without resistance from the founder/owner. Every suggestion I made was met with “I tried it and it did not work.” In reality she did not try, she intended but backed off when the other party pushed back.
In essence we took control over cash by:
1. raising prices significantly
2. Introducing differentiated product and two tiered pricing
3. Switched product production from prepaid to 45 days AP.
.....
N. Restructured relationship with distributors
All these actions produced huge negative working capital. Instead of financing operations at an insane % rate, which technically was killing the business the company paid off all the debts and was spewing cash.
There is one and one only reason why companies go out of business: they run out of cash.
Many a situation may lead to this, but lack of cash is the reason. When Leaman Brothers when under, the company had half-a-trillion dollars in assets but it could not convert these assets fast enough into cash to continue its operations.
Adding to some great suggestions ... Sometimes there is no reason to waste time fighting or/and adjusting. Move on and find another team that would appreciate what you have to offer. If you have so much experience you may have a few people to reach out to for connections.
Slowdown and listen. Do you hear this loud sucking sound? It's the demand for software developers. There is a ton of examples in competitive athletics and other areas of human endeavors when someone was unappreciated in one situation and super successful in another.
Still, before you leave, learn as much as you can about the situation, so, if for no other reason, you could recognize it before joining.
1. They moved out of Delaware “due to recent actions by the Court of Chancery, which have injected an unprecedented level of subjectivity into judicial decisions, undermining the court’s reputation for unbiased expertise. This has introduced legal uncertainty into what was widely considered the gold standard of U.S. corporate law.”
“The foundation of Delaware’s historical reputation has been non-ideological, specialized business courts that have developed a robust body of case law around the so-called “business judgment rule”, legal shorthand for a (rebuttable) presumption borrowed from English common law that boards of directors act in good faith and with informed judgment when making business decisions. Over the years, the Delaware courts developed a limited number of objective, common sense exceptions to this general rule; however, recently, those exceptions have begun to swallow the rule. Director independence has been questioned in cases where the board has granted “moonshot” grants to exceptional founders, and in one notable case the court reprised the chorus from Hotel California by rejecting a board’s decision to move its place of incorporation out of Delaware (although it was later reversed by the Delaware Supreme Court). This has rightly caused tech startup founders to question the primacy of Delaware.
Although the Delaware Legislature has taken some exception to these developments, its actions fail to take full measure of the problem. In particular, Delaware courts can at times appear biased against technology startup founders and their boards. Litigation – even where successfully defeated – is costly and time consuming, particularly for the tech startups that need every penny they raise to build innovative companies. The resulting legal uncertainty is a real cause for concern for entrepreneurs and their professional investors who often sit on their boards. As a result, many of the companies we fund and the entrepreneurs that we talk to are taking a second look at whether they should incorporate in other jurisdictions, prompted by the departure from Delaware of significant technology companies like Dropbox, Tripadvisor and Tesla.”
2. They chose NV, because “In contrast, Nevada has taken significant steps in establishing a technical, non-ideological forum for resolving business disputes,” and “has historically been a business friendly state with fair and balanced regulatory policies.“
“Nevada has taken a different path, choosing instead to codify the business judgement rule in statute, eliminating the ability of judges to modify or change the rule. In addition, the Nevada legislature recently passed two measures that take significant steps toward upgrading its existing business courts into specialized venues to resolve complex commercial disputes. AB 239 provides for a waiver of jury trials in civil cases, while AJR 8 calls for the adoption of a constitutional amendment to permit the direct appointment of business court judges by the Governor, rather than through the current system of elections. Both measures passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the state Assembly and Senate, receiving the support of Nevada’s Republican Governor and Democratic Secretary of State, Speaker of the Assembly, and Senate Majority leader. While more work remains to be done on reforming Nevada’s business courts, we think that these measures represent a critical step in making Nevada a destination of choice for entrepreneurs.”
Taxation is mentioned nowhere.
What are the bases for your distrust in the stated reasoning?