How Chris Sacca And J.P. Morgan Acquired 10% Of Twitter

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/27/jp-morgan-twitter-chris-sacca-10-percent-secondary/

by Cmccann7 • 15 years ago

70 18 15 years ago

jonknee2• 15 years ago

It's a good time to reflect on what a coup the split from Odeo was. According to the article, Ev has more than $400m in Twitter equity plus at least $100m in cash... Lot of coin.

Odeo was VC backed wasn't going anywhere for a number of reasons, namely iTunes beating them to the podcast game. It did launch a side project called twttr though, which back then was an SMS focused app. Shortly after Ev bought out the investors in Odeo, spun twttr off to a new company and then sold Odeo which has still never done anything remarkable. Odeo's sale price was something like a million bucks, compared to Twitter's current $4.5b valuation. Talk about identifying and keeping the gems.

tonystubblebine• 15 years ago

As one of the investors said at the time, "He's either going to be remembered as an idiot or as a genius."

The thing is, I don't think even he knew which way it was going to go until after the Summize acquisition two years later.

Twitter always seemed like a worthwhile project, but those first two years were really hard for everyone and from the outside it looked like they might just completely fail to keep up with the growth.

paulsingh• 15 years ago

On a somewhat unrelated note, is there any publicly available information on how the split might have been structured (cap table, etc) ? (I'm right in the middle of splitting off a new startup from an existing company...)

marcamillion3• 15 years ago

Uhh...am I the only one doing a double take at the fact that Chris Sacca has raised a $1+B fund ?

When did that happen ? How did I miss that ?

That's pretty...errr...frothy...and epic.

I never knew he packed that sorta heat. Congrats to him...but now he has the wonderful task of actually putting so much money to work.

I would love to be getting his 2% right now.

nostrademons• 15 years ago

Also a double-take on Evan Williams cashing out $100M of his personal shares.

That's a big cash-out for a company that's not even public yet. Max Levchin's share of PayPal, which IPO'd and then was bought for $1.5B, was only estimated at around $40M.

byrneseyeview• 15 years ago

The "Paypal Mafia" people all got <$50mm payouts. That's part of why they advocate for higher founder ownership--so the folks they fund (or work with) won't make the same mistake.

And the cashing-out environment has completely changed. It's harder to go public, but easier to cash out without going public. It's tough to get anything out of the comparison, other than "Boy, things have changed!"

marcamillion3• 15 years ago

That one was another one too. This is the type of understated reporting I love from Arrington.

The title spoke about how Sacca owned 10% of Twitter - yet there are so many other 'throw away' gems in there that really make you stop and re-read what you think you just saw.

That's kinda insane that Ev cashed out $100M worth of shares and still is the single largest shareholder.

Good for him!

trotsky• 15 years ago

I'd be surprised if he got standard management fees on a fund where the "bulk" of the money comes from one contributor and they tell you how much of who to buy.

jonknee2• 15 years ago

I'd be happy with almost any percentage of a billion dollars. Annually.

SriniK• 15 years ago

Indeed a great snowstorm(w\ tons of snow) in Tahoe ha. Following @sacca on twitter, I can tell 2010 year of Tiger was really good him. Happy for him.

This trend highlights again that, there are 3-4 companies that become thunder lizards and money just pours on them. As companies ready to go ipo, underwriters want to get early access and back stage tickets.

EDIT: Morgan Stanley takes facebook and JP Morgan takes twitter. Awesome to see underwriters paying upfront to own quality companies - shows how dry the ipo market is and how desperate underwriters are.

vamsee• 15 years ago

Given the rocketing valuations, my guess is a good part of the investors are eyeing a buyout by the likes of Google/Fb rather than wait around until IPO/profits.

JacobIrwin2• 15 years ago

Both finance and tech startup-related article. +1.

I thought I'd mention Sharespost. Its a good source to buy premarket stocks. They allow for shareholders (often internal stakeholders) to put their shares up for sale before IPO. Currently, Facebook and Linkedin are up for grabs. I found an interesting article on Linkedin's IPO earlier today. I'll start it in a new thread here in Hacker News.

JacobIrwin2• 15 years ago

(I am not a rep for Sharespost - thought some of you would like to know about it)

ebaysucks• 15 years ago

Last time the printed money went into real estate => RE bubble.

This time the printed money goes into tech startups => tech bubble.

moe• 15 years ago

Wow, $4.5 billion valuation. What was their business model again?

axod• 15 years ago

Riding on top of the bubble for as long as they can I believe.

ajhit406• 15 years ago

chris sacca was born in buffalo, ny

in 2009, chris rode a bicycle across the US

buffalo...

How Chris Sacca And J.P. Morgan Acquired 10% Of Twitter

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