> IRS records show that in 1999 Thiel purchased 1.7 million shares of his startup, which would soon become PayPal, for just $1,700 — a tenth of a penny per share
> Even though Thiel's startup received millions in funding within months, Pensco still told the IRS these founders' shares were worth less than $1,700 at the end of 1999.
Under certain circumstances, there is no statute of limitations. If Pensco did knowingly misrepresent the value of the shares, and if the funding round did imply a wildly different valuation, IRS could still pursue the case.
SaaS is all the rage now, and the business of SaaS is disincentivized from making "lego-like" software. The easier it is to interoperate, arguably the easier it is to replace or reimplement your service.
Because a lot of the value of unix tools is derived from their interoperability, they play nice with each other.
1) The bulk of their apparent loss is a one-time expense
2) They are improving the unit economics of ride sharing and that, if the trend continues, they will be positive in the future.
3) The divisions that are losing money are new ventures like Uber eats and represent a short-term investment that should payoff
If they can reach positive unit economics after subsidies, that would be great for the company. It is still unknown, especially since Lyft and other companies are competing in the space.
There's no guarantee that good approaches in 2019 will still be good approaches in 2029 and beyond. OOP was considered a good approach many years ago, and now in many circles it is derided and bashed.
The AdSense settlement (http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/) was quite literally that exact pattern: Google would do a review once you cleared the $100 threshold for a payout and conveniently block you, but there was no evidence that the ad customers were being refunded
If it's something that others will likely need and will likely pay for, it may make more sense to build it and sell to them. By open sourcing, you eliminate one major potential revenue stream for unknown benefit.
The interesting question, whose answer will likely have to be forced through some leak or investigative reporting, is whether FB and the execs knew about the potential connection to Russia in 2016. If it was brought to the attention of Zuckerberg and Sandberg, in light of their adamant denials back in 2016 and 2017, I don't see how the company or executives walk out of this unscathed.
"Move fast and break things" explicitly lionizes a disregard for externalities, so it's no surprise that assessing the damage is not in the company's DNA
This is true of any company equity as well. If Bezos decided to unload his entire stake in amazon, for example, the stock price would tank. At that level, it's all based on valuation, not liquidation value
> Even though Thiel's startup received millions in funding within months, Pensco still told the IRS these founders' shares were worth less than $1,700 at the end of 1999.
Under certain circumstances, there is no statute of limitations. If Pensco did knowingly misrepresent the value of the shares, and if the funding round did imply a wildly different valuation, IRS could still pursue the case.