He only worked there a couple of years, and before MS got big. Did he really deserve the same cut as the other two (who worked for 30+) did? Maybe/not, but the question is valid.
Yeah I feel like this is an underrated point. Does being there at the early years of a company justify a cut of an unfathomable fortune that took the other partners many, many more years to fully form? It’s not so cut and dry, especially when we’re talking about the kind of fortune being fought over.
If the other partners want more value in exchange for continuing to work for the company, they should negotiate for more shares in a dilution event.
If they expected 30 years of service in the first place, then they should've put a 30 year vesting term on the shares from the start.
There's no right answer, it really depends on what people want and negotiate for. I may expect to put in 5 years and then retire with whatever value we end up with. That's totally reasonable. Just because my partner decides at that point to keep working doesn't mean our deal is suddenly no longer valid.
That's why I say, if you want to change the deal halfway through you need to get the board to issue more shares.
The subject is well trodden now, of course. But, ask me in 1981 and I wouldn't have had much in the way of clue. My first intuition is that they should have bought him out at a nice premium at the time he left.
On the other hand, it is so bad a cool guy won a 100x lottery? Worse things have happened.
For an extension of that thought: does being there in the early days of a company justify a disproportionate cut compared to the people who then work for the company for the next thirty years?