The Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/ipo-man/

by sk2code • 13 years ago

184 179 13 years ago

antihero• 13 years ago

What's to stop a rich asshole buying up a massive majority and then just making him do fucked up stuff?

It's sort of a microcosm of capitalism in that respect, don't you think? It's a wonder that our system works as well as it does.

slygent• 13 years ago

Because people can choose whether to "sell shares" or not? A controlling stake would be worth rather more than a minority one, surely?

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

You think capitalism works?

jnazario• 13 years ago

yeah, i had that idea a long time ago. in a dream i did just this, and then donald trump bought up a controlling interest in me. i had to call him up to figure out which socks to put on.

this is kind of a neat idea, an investment in future potential writ small.

perlgeek• 13 years ago

I guess there are limits to what the shareholders can make him do. After all slavery has been abolished. Still I think it's a quite risky idea.

frabcus• 13 years ago

He can refuse to do what he's told to - it refers to this in the article.

His share price might then collapse, and he has a substantial financial stake in himself.

It's the same as any company - all the staff could refuse to cooperate and walk out, and it would be worth nothing overnight.

Samuel_Michon8• 13 years ago

“The shareholders, meanwhile, were well aware of their power. “If he doesn’t do whatever we say, we’ll sell and his share price will fall,” Berezin says. And sure enough, when shareholders voted him vegetarian, Merrill complied, even though he had been an avid meat eater. He was a longtime Democrat, but his investors decided to make him register as a Republican, which they argued was more business-friendly.”

Sounds to me like he doesn't have the power to decide for himself.

thasmin• 13 years ago

He has the overwhelming majority interest. He's promised not to vote with his shared but the option remains open if he's told to do something illegal.

Evbn8• 13 years ago

Even minority shareholders and employees have the inalienable power to decline to break the law. That applies to any contract.

troyastorino• 13 years ago

Wouldn't this be illegal under the 13th Amendment? Isn't it equivalent to partial slavery?

ryanbrunner2• 13 years ago

Is it even partial slavery if he doesn't have voting stock? This article is cute in parts and all, but I really question the legality (and definitely the morality) of this.

meric• 13 years ago

He still controls 98+% of shares, which he is choosing not to vote with.

ryanbrunner2• 13 years ago

That probably changes things then. I mistakenly assumed that his shares were actually non-voting shares, and that he had no contractual right to vote. If he has voting rights but is just abstaining from using them, then that's quite a bit less crazy.

seandhi• 13 years ago

I doubt there is any case law surrounding voluntary servitude of this nature. I'm not sure one could call this slavery since he voluntarily entered into the relationship with his shareholders. It would be an interesting case, no doubt.

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

And much of original slavery and indentured servitude was based on the slave being in debt.

mhb• 13 years ago

How much for a kidney?

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

Brilliant ending. Would love to see a follow up. What happens when he wants out? Does he ave to buy everyone out? File for ch 11?

TheCoelacanth2• 13 years ago

I can't imagine this arrangement is legally binding. The 13th amendment kind of interferes.

logn• 13 years ago

Also, courts don't enforce 'unconscionable contracts'

brianbreslin2• 13 years ago

but he intentionally entered into this arrangement on his own free will.

shanelja9• 13 years ago

I can't help but feel that if this was financially legally binding - for him to have to pay these dividends - it would be a great way to fund your way through college, E.G: I'm too poor to afford college, if you fund me the $40,000, you can have 10% of my life income.

It makes sense, assuming you pick your candidates wisely and aren't scammed (and that's a big if!):

$40,000 down-payment for 10%

10% per year for $3,500 per year [1] over a career of around 30 years:

30 * 3,500 = $105,000

Average profit: $65,000

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

mootothemax• 13 years ago

From the article:

"Upstart.com, a company founded last year by Google exec David Girouard, offers a bit of capital in exchange for a cut of a college graduate’s future earnings."

shanelja9• 13 years ago

I checked the link - it's not exactly right, they are funding graduates who have already completed their college course, and it has to be minimum a 4 year course.

What I meant, was funding 18-30 year olds to actually go to college, obviously, something like "history of art" would probably not have significant returns, but a Masters in CS? They would rake the money in.

(P.S. It's US only unfortunately and I'm in the UK)

count• 13 years ago

How is this different from a student loan? Bank gives student $100k, student pays bank $250/mo for 30 years (or whatever the terms are).

marquis2• 13 years ago

>it would be a great way to fund your way through college

Isn't this called a 'student loan'?

shanelja9• 13 years ago

Answered this below:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5454553

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

Shut up and stop giving the capitalist class ideas. We want to put this all off for as long as we can.

shanelja9• 13 years ago

Your reply was a little passive aggressive but I'll respond amicably:

sure, it might be a little "capitalist" to have the idea of selling your life's work for start up capital but it's the same as any other industry - you get a mortgage for your home, you get a student loan for your college, you sell equity to fund your start up.

In all honesty, I don't see the issue with this, it will force the college loan office to be more competitive, at the moment it holds a monopoly, which is more capitalist? One "company" (because it IS a for profit organization) which controls every single loan, or multiple entities/individuals competing to give the best one?

chiph• 13 years ago

This is essentially the plot of The Unincorporated Man. Only with micro-managing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man

alexjeffrey• 13 years ago

this is insane - the investors' plans are very unlikely to align with his personal wants and needs (unlike a business where the goal of making money is shared between the business and its shareholders).

some of the examples in the article make this abundantly clear:

* the sleep experiment, where he was obviously suffering by the end

* the gay relationship which, while the article doesn't mention whether Merrill is bisexual, certainly seems to imply that he isn't and went through with the relationship to appease his shareholders

heiska• 13 years ago

It's not insane. By definition, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

He changed his sleeping routine and had a homosexual relationship, found out they didn't work out for him, gave up on them. Nothing insane about that.

tjic• 13 years ago

> By definition, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results

That's a pithy cliched phrase, but it's not the definition.

One really needs to read through the DSM (it's a flawed political document firmly embedded in the prejudices of its day (i.e. today) that's more pre-scientific taxonomy than science), but the short version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms...

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

> By definition, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

No, that's a pithy quote attributed to Einstein.

The actual definition of insanity is very different.

svag• 13 years ago

As a single page http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/ipo-man/all/

jcr2• 13 years ago

The previous HN discussion mentioned in the article is here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723408

zavulon• 13 years ago

I haven't had my tea yet this morning, so I'm a little slow.. This isn't real, right? There's no way this is real.. Right?

theDoug4• 13 years ago

It is real, there was also this piece[1] in The Atlantic earlier this month, and Mike's on the Today show this morning.

I'm Doug Stewart[2] (mentioned in the interactive "Who Owns Mike Merrill?" graph). If anyone has questions, I'll try my best.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/putting-... [2]: http://www.kmikeym.com/users/137

phpnode• 13 years ago

Just curious, do you really make more money as a photographer than as a developer? Or is one firmly work and the other firmly hobby?

jcr2• 13 years ago

It's a wonderfully quirky and entertaining spoof/joke, and all of the people involved seem to be having a lot of fun keeping it running all these years. My question is simple; how to you expect this to end?

kaiserama• 13 years ago

He was just on the Today show. Unfortunately, this is real.

lnanek2• 13 years ago

It looks like the price is slowly going up over months, but I would have expected a spike with a Today show appearance. Maybe he didn't plug his shares well enough? Or needs a buy button right on the first page instead of buried in after login or something? His voters really need to control his actions better to capitalize on PR like this to grow the stock. ;/

mpeg• 13 years ago

It is, I know some people who own shares and saw the website when it first started; I think it's ridiculous.

Ygg22• 13 years ago

Why does this surprise you? Human behavior isn't rational. This specific example isn't that weird. What it boils down is that it is an elaborate freak show for promotion (both the medium transmitting this and the object that is the "freak").

yohann305• 13 years ago

At the frontiers of slavery. This guy is getting too much attention, he better have a great lawyer, troubles ahead.

VexXtreme• 13 years ago

I don't think this is about money at all. More likely than not it's some kind of sexual fantasy or something similar. No sane person would sell themselves for a couple thousand bucks like this just for the possibility of turning profit in the future.

Samuel_Michon8• 13 years ago

“No sane person”

You might be on to something...

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

He's not insane, he's just ahead of the curve. I imagine this will be quite common in the near future, probably as a "logical" replacement for student loans within the system of neoliberal capitalism.

lelandbatey• 13 years ago

I don't know. Many people do odd things for no reason other than their own curiosity. For example, there's the guy making soylent in an effort to create something that lets him avoid eating. Many would ask "why?" while they say "why not."

Also, selling only 10,000 shares lets him back out if he where to encounter a problem (such as one person buying all his shares and then demanding he act in ways he's uncomfortable with).

blhack• 13 years ago

Soylent isn't a new concept. They joked about "bachelor chow" on Futurama, and I think most people who have ever owned a dog have wondered:

"Why can I buy 2 weeks worth of food for my dog, which she seems to love, that sits in a bag, requires no refrigeration, no preparation, and providers her all the nutrients that she needs for such a low price? Why can't I also eat dog food?"

pavel_lishin5• 13 years ago

According to the article,

> He kept the remaining 99.1 percent of himself but promised that his shares would be nonvoting: He’d let his new stockholders decide what he should do with his life.

So how does that really let him back out?

mtrimpe• 13 years ago

It essentially seems like a drawn out piece of performance art and for an art piece I must say it seems to doing quite well.

blablabla123• 13 years ago

It's quite funny, and a consequent move in a robotic system. We can all live like robots if we want, he is taking it seriously.

At least on average, the more robotic you live your life, the more money you get. 9 to 7 instead of 9 to 5? Working on weekends? He is taking it to the extreme, he will be working 24/7. He is selling responsibility for his life for anyone giving enough money.

iopuy• 13 years ago

Obviously this is a joke. Look at his sleeping excursion, it didn't work so he stopped. It's a fun cute thing to do but little beyond that. Does he have the same legal protections and obligations as a company? No. Would any of this hold up in a court of law?. No. Congratulations to the hacker news reader who got a comment in the paper. I also don't know what to make of the sentence about "fooling around" with that guy. Can some explain what I just read there?

dubcanada• 13 years ago

I think it's pretty obvious what you just read. But if you really need someone to explain it, you can read up about male + male sex on pretty much any search engine.

Delmania• 13 years ago

I suspect I'll get downvoted for this, but for some reason, I find this quote chilling, “Children are a financial drain,” Merrill wrote. “The time investment of raising a child is immense. The responsibility is epic. The impact on future projects would be drastic. In light of these factors, it makes sense to reduce the chances to nearly zero and have a vasectomy performed.”

It seems to completely remove the joy and satisfaction that comes from raising children. Only a few things should be viewed from a financial lens. Wealth is not money, wealth is discretionary time.

Pkeod12• 13 years ago

YMMV. Not everyone wants kids, plenty of people are already having kids, many people who do have kids regret it entirely, and many people correctly recognize that you can't live your dreams and raise your kids right. It's not just a financial lens for many people it's a time lens too.

Having kids whose lives you very probably won't even be allowed to be a part of is a reality for many guys too. Even if you have kids in marriage the reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay.

Why risk it if you know you can avoid it? Having kids it's a guarantee of joy or satisfaction. Writing books, creating epic things can give just as much joy and satisfaction.

10 year at a time male birth control is coming so vasectomies will no longer be necessary. http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/vasalgel-home

http://reddit.com/r/childfree

rayiner8• 13 years ago

This is why India is ultimately destined to overtake the western world. Either directly or from within.

Having had occasion to debate about this on /r/childfree, I feel like a lot of their arguments are based on one of the following fallacies:

1) That there are "too many people." That may be true in parts of Africa, but in the developed world, the positive economic contribution of each additional person still vastly outweights the cost of their incremental strain on natural resources.

2) That depopulation in the future doesn't affect people in the present. If you're thinking of investing in a startup, what does it do to your calculus if you know that your customer base won't be any bigger in 20 years than it is today, and will be older?

3) There is no positive externality to having kids. Your average person is going to contribute millions of dollars in labor and social value (how much would you pay to save the life of a loved one?) over his or her lifetime.

4) Failure to look at the value of alternatives in incremental terms. The question isn't: what is the value of having kids versus doing a startup, it's: how much does having kids reduce my probability of doing a startup, and what is the weighted value of that relative to having kids.

5) Failure to account for the correlation between parent-child incomes. I'd say 90% of the kids from my high-income suburban middle school are now making median or above incomes. Maybe 7-10% are in the top 1% of income for their age bracket. High income people create a larger positive externality when they have kids.

6) Failure to weight the value of alternatives by probabilities. Your average person has very few alternative courses of action that is going to generate as much economic value as raising kids. Your high income person has has a greater probability of doing these things, but writing a best-selling book or founding a successful startup is far from guaranteed. So the relevant question is not: what has higher external social value, doing a startup or having a kid, but rather which of those has higher social value weighted by the probabilities that your startup will have any real success (low), or by the probability that your kid will achieve at least median economic success (quite high).

This is of course not to argue with anyone who chooses not to have kids. Nobody needs to justify personal decisions like that. But to the extent that they do try to justify it (and that's largely what /r/childfree is--people who feel the need to justify their decision), it's useful not to rely on fallacious reasoning to do so.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

"Why risk it if you know you can avoid it?"

That's a point. Also, a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. ;)

thesis• 13 years ago

Wow... you seem very jaded... or negative.

"many people who do have kids regret it entirely"

"can't live your dreams and raise your kids right"

"reality is you will probably get a divorce, the kids will go to the mother, and you will pay"

loganfrederick• 13 years ago

"Plenty of people are already having kids"

Arguably not true. Population growth rates have been decreasing in a variety of countries[1] and economists have found connections between economic growth and population growth[2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas... [2]: http://scholar.harvard.edu/kremer/publications

DanBC• 13 years ago

Children have a human right to see both parents unless there is a risk of harm from on of the parents.

This comes from the UN convention on rights of the child. (http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30177.html)

America, along with Somalia and South Sudan, has not ratified the convention.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convent...)

Evbn8• 13 years ago

Uh, if you never get to see your kids, they aren't a time sink.

tripzilch• 13 years ago

Well think about the other side then, kids growing up in a family where daddy is owned by shareholders.

Corporations don't usually make babies.

So who would be ultimately responsible for these children?

Samuel_Michon8• 13 years ago

Of course it's chilling. It takes all emotion out of the equation. He allowed others to make him a vegetarian, Republican, even to try homosexual relations. This is so way beyond an experiment that I suspect there's a clinical term for his affliction.

That said, in less developed countries having many children is a form of retirement planning, so I'm not sure he's even right about them being a bad investment.

pavel_lishin5• 13 years ago

It doesn't seem to different from someone in a long-term BDSM relationship. (I have no idea what the actual term is, not my scene). The only difference is that except instead of one Master, he's got as many as are willing to buy shares.

If this is what he's into, I ain't in any position to judge - except where it hurts other people who didn't consent, such as McCormick.

scythe• 13 years ago

That clinical term would be narcissistic personality disorder: he's more concerned with appearances (doing what investors say) than outcomes (does he actually want to do it). That is: the reality of what he does matters oh-so-much less than what other people think of it.

Do you think this guy would publicly admit to having sex with another guy if he couldn't disclaim responsibility to his investors? But hold on:

>A reminder for others: shareholders don't dictate what's tabled. We can only vote on what's proposed, the implication being that K5M is fine with either outcome.

His friend's words. Here's Wired: "Feeling the weight of investor expectations, Merrill spent a drunken night “fooling around” with him. "

Note that I'm not saying he's bisexual; I'm not a mind-reader. I'm just pointing out the obvious difference between who made the decision in the story and who made it in reality.

So everyone is wondering how this will end, here's your answer:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/04/the_near_death_of_a_s...

carlob• 13 years ago

This seems rather shortsighted, children are a drain, but an asset too. I think one should view them as spinoffs, and of course shareholders will have equity in them.

What? You can't sell stocks of your children?!

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

Not yet.

jgeorge2• 13 years ago

No downvote from me, but it depends on what moves you. Not everyone experiences the joy and satisfaction that comes from having children. Doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means their priorities differ from yours.

dmm• 13 years ago

A life devoted to family is antiquated. After all, what revenue can be extracted from a man whose primary source of satisfaction are his commitments and devotion to his wife and children?

A man who compulsively watches youtube(tm) videos on his ipad(tm) all night can be show many more ads than one who spends the evening reading to his kids.

Modern life is a constant assault of sophisticated propaganda(advertisements) imploring us to identify as consumers of brands and to be materially dissatisfied.

eli_gottlieb9• 13 years ago

Consume? You think we get to consume? What arrogance! What luxury! The New Capitalist Man shall require no consumption, none at all, only his Work! He shall need only his Work and Work without end, for the self-sacrifice of toil is the one thing that can bring true liberty! He shall pray each morning to his one god, "Work makes free!"

/rant ;-)

EDIT: /prophecy

Evbn8• 13 years ago

Kids are incredibly expensive, so this parody doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

rhizome2• 13 years ago

You might be interested in this alternate take on the current Sheryl Sandberg mediascape:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

shadowrunner• 13 years ago

Someone who views children as a financial drain shouldn't be a parent anyway. The heart needs to be into it.

samstave• 13 years ago

He was clearly unloved by his parents.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I thought it was like a 10 yr old talking about how silly it would be to buy a car. After all they cost a lot of money and hey you can get anywhere on a bike.

That kind of discussion doesn't have any understanding or appreciation for the actual situation. Its a view looking from the present into the future versus a view in the present looking to the past.

But you can't miss what you've never experienced. So some decisions look correct when viewed from one direction in time and incorrect when viewed from the other. So far the number of people I know who have never had kids and wish that they had, exceeds the number of people I know who have had kids and wished that they didn't. Its not scientific of course, just another anecdote. Since I get a lot out of having had kids and raised them I feel sorry for people who won't have an opportunity to experience that, but I recognize that their experience could just as easily not be a positive one.

davidroberts3• 13 years ago

I have three kids, one in high school and two in college. They are expensive, but like many other things, you can decide how you want to divide the expense between time and money. Take education for example. You can send them to expensive private school, you can send them to public school, or you can home-school them.

Private school puts a lot of education in other people's hands, but you can choose a school which holds your values and works to inculcate them in your children.

Public school is free, but you have little control over value education, and the overall quality can be pretty crappy. You can improve this by living in a less desirable home in an area that has good schools for the same price as a nicer home in an area with bad schools. (Housing prices tend to following public school quality very closely.) You can also make up for it by spending time with your kids, filling in the gaps in their education and instilling values you consider important, or you can farm this work out part-time through youth organizations and lessons from private providers at some expense, but probably less than a fulltime private school.

Home schooling gives you complete control over education, but requires an immense amount of time and the quality is capped by your own teaching skills unless you farm out some of the education as mentioned for the public school.

My family selected the public model with a heavy emphasis on adding value through our own time, with some investment in private education, mainly for music lessons.

The values we worked to instill were self-reliance, compassion, practicality, and stability. We added to the quality of public education through encouraging reading, asking questions, and keeping a close watch on the educational quality of the schools and teachers and helping out whenever we could.

Instead of signing our kids up for a lot of "enriching" classes and activities based on what we thought they should do, we encouraged them to find their own passions, and supported those passions financially only as needed. For example, we paid for music lessons for our kids interested in music, because neither my wife or I are musically skilled. When my oldest became interested in movie-making in middle school, we provided him a used video camera, blank tapes (this was back in the early 2000s), cheap editing software, and technical advice as needed.

When they wanted to learn something we could teach, like cooking or answers to general questions, we made sure we were available to do those things.

All-in-all, we tried to keep it low pressure and self-guided, aside from some clear boundaries that evolved as they grew older and more responsible, and some expectations that we monitored and corrected when needed, including that they would do their best in school, and that they would behave at all times like civilized human beings who raise the overall happiness of the world by being here instead of reducing it. (For example, not tormenting siblings, acting properly according to the context, such as in a restaurant or public gathering, being polite and treating others with respect, not breaking things, especially things that don't belong to them, etc.)

Some of the results are already in. My oldest spent over three years in a youth gap-year volunteer service organization after high school, first as a participant, then as an intern, then as an employee. Now he is completely self-sufficient in his first year as a full-time student at a community college, with the intent of transferring to a four-year university and getting a credential to teach history to high school students. He sings and plays in a band at a church, and is engaged to a very nice young lady he has known since middle school.

My middle son went straight to the University of Chicago after high school, where he is pursuing an economics major, possibly with a minor in physics. Almost all the expenses (including housing and meals) are being paid through scholarships and grants through the University. We are kicking in a small amount (several thousand a year, mainly for health insurance), and he is paying about $4000 a year + books and incidental expenses through a combination of loans and part time work. He has a 3.8 GPA so far.

My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she is mainly interested in art, so besides the normal high school classes, she is taking an art class at school and participating in the art club, along with drawing at home.

We have been lucky to have healthy, reasonably intelligent kids. Our main expenses for them have been food, routine medical care, the cost of a larger living space, extra gas for taking them places, and occasional fun stuff like going to a theme park or movie (which we enjoyed too!). It was all stuff we could achieve on an average American family income, including some periods of unemployment.

I think when deciding whether to invest time or money, time is better for the kids, more fun for the parents, and definitely builds a better relationship both immediately and in the long term.

I think the question of whether or not to have kids should not be addressed from a financial standpoint. Instead you should ask yourself: "Is being successful in my career more important to me than raising happy children who can contribute to society?" If the answer is yes for both husband and wife (and I think a long-term, legally-committed relationship between the parents is a major factor in raising happy kids), then maybe you shouldn't have kids. No problem. The world needs dedicated people who pour all into their work. If one of the parents is willing to put raising kids above career (I don't mean to not work, just to put the kid's well being above career success), then having kids might be a great idea. In our case, initially I worked a lot and my wife spent a lot of time with the kids, now she is working a lot, and I'm spending a lot of time.

Personally, I think my wife and I made the right decision to have kids. The joy far outweighs the hassles, and more than pays back the expenses. Plus there is the potential added bonus of grandchildren!

xtracto2• 13 years ago

> I think the question of whether or not to have kids should not be addressed from a financial standpoint. Instead you should ask yourself: "Is being successful in my career more important to me than raising happy children who can contribute to society?" If the answer is yes for both husband and wife (and I think a long-term, legally-committed relationship between the parents is a major factor in raising happy kids), then maybe you shouldn't have kids. No problem.

Exactly, the financial factor does not play a strong role in the decision to have children. Once someone wants to have a child, all other factors become irrelevant (for good, or for bad... for people that get to have 5 children and do not have enough money to maintain them). As you say, the joy kids bring to these people cannot be measured in terms of money.

OTOH, for people who do not want to have children (like me, at this time), there is no way to 'convince' that it is worth it.

throwaway1979• 13 years ago

You wrote an excellent comment. I just want to point out something ... given that your kids are in college now, you had kids at least 15-20 years ago. Are "things" fundamentally different today?

Growing up, I had no doubts in my mind that I wanted kids. Today, I am confused. By the time we have pay for rent, student loans and "basic" expenses, it doesn't seem we have a whole lot left over to retire. And this is WITHOUT having to pay for kids. More than likely, we will take the plunge - just biological needs and such - but it seems like one of those times you know you are shooting yourself in the foot.

anigbrowl2• 13 years ago

From his shareholders' point of view, the joy of haing children isn't fungible unless they live in close proximity to their investment. Of course, there's an argument tht being happy will make Merrill more productive, but that presupposes he likes children.

taylonr• 13 years ago

I think it goes with the territory. In a lot of senses, this guy gave up his personhood and became a corporation. The things we take for granted as individuals he puts before the board.

For example, he was able to convince them that he wanted to date the second girl, but that's not something any of us have likely had to deal with. The one exception being if you're still at home and you try to convince your parents you want to date a specific person.

In that context, the statement was a little chilling, but no more so (to me) than all the other decisions. The entire thing was chilling to me.

xtracto2• 13 years ago

I do not see any issue with that statement. In a pragmatic way, it is completely true. Children are a financial drain, they take lots of resources from parents (time, money, etc).

The fact that for some people it is 100% worth it is a separate issue. I've got friends who are suffering because money is not enough (having to work two jobs living here in Mexico), but they won't change their children for a 'more confortable' life. For some people, children are worth more than all the resources they would spend... a thousand times.

For me, someone who doesn't want to have children, it is not worth it (maybe not now at 31... maybe in the future I'll change my mind, who knows). So I agree with the reasoning that having children will only imply funneling resources to something that won't just give me any satisfaction.

daSn0wie• 13 years ago

I think it's a great idea. I feel like I commonly give advice to people, but not knowing what else is going on in the person's life. Also, the outcome of my advice usually doesn't have a direct effect on me. At least a bad decision (or multiple bad decisions) have a financial impact on the stock performance and/or the willingness of the company to continue to participate.

PaulHoule• 13 years ago

I think the amount of money involved is shockingly small.

To get some idea of what the present-time value of a person's work is, if you make $50,000 a year and work for 20 years, you make $1M in that period of time. He could make the $100,000 by working another 4 hours a week over the next 20 years and not need the $1K.

I mean, my wife and I regularly make small business investments in our activities of up to $500 without ever asking each other. We'd usually ask each other if it's more than that.

This guy is having to talk to a committee just to make a $90 investment that's just nuts. But I guess it's just a matter of time before cargo cult investing gets celebrated in Tired magazine.

redblacktree• 13 years ago

Yeah, it seems that he undersold on the IPO. I guess investors were nervous about a new asset class.

Pwnguinz2• 13 years ago

"You make $1mm in 20 years", or "You make whatever is left after taxes & expenses"?

The latter, clearly :).

Anyways, the point was well taken; he did undersell his IPO. Newcomers on the block will surely learn from him and offer shares for more inflated prices ;).

In fact, his IPO earned him a pittance <$1k (nine-hundred and something shares sold to 'friends and family').

maxent• 13 years ago

The idea of selling equity in oneself is the topic of a great book (written in 2000) called "Future Wealth" by Chris Meyer and Stan Davis:

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Wealth-Stan-Davis/dp/1565113942

David Bowie sold bonds backed by his IP in 1997:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_bond

The book talks about equity being a logical next step and about the value of being able to diversify and distribute risk. I think there is definitely one possible future where this is very common. It probably starts with athletes and celebrities - as you can see, this guy has gotten a terrible valuation (for several reasons).

For years, I have been talking myself out of starting a company that serves as an exchange for people selling equity in themselves. It is inevitable that someone tries this because the crowd-funding industry is so sexy. It will be an interesting experiment, but I'm not sure the effects on society will be net desirable. At its best, it would give people the ability to sell a fraction of themselves for some up-front cash and give them the ability to take bigger risks in the projects they do. Anyway, if you want to talk more about this, hit me up.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

There are a number of relationship types in human interactions: family/communality, reciprocity, and dominance.

At a minimum, any attempt to expand one relationship type (in this case, reciprocity) to encompass an entire life can be expected to entail high levels of awkwardness - the feeling a person gets when they realize their understanding of a relationship type with someone else is different from that other person's understanding.

The evidence also indicates that when the norms of reciprocity are imposed on erstwhile communal relations, the reciprocity paradigm consumes the communality paradigm and the relationship changes from communal to reciprocal. In effect, turning your entire life into a market transaction makes communal/familial relations impossible.

For most people, I can't imagine this would be conducive to good mental and emotional health. (Presumably, psychopaths won't have a problem with it.)

alexgrande• 13 years ago

That is _so_ Portland.

gamblor956• 13 years ago

I think someone took The Unincorporated Man a little too seriously.

The reason that we don't allow people to sell shares in themselves is because it will inevitably result in indentured servitude, or even de facto slavery.

The Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share

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