[fairity]

Why are people saying this seems like a bad deal?

If they really only raised $1.7b, per Crunchbase, then this seems to me like a very good outcome for everyone involved except its late stage investors. And, even for the late stage investors, they're breaking even.

[blindriver]

No. The last two investment tranches will get back their money, based on 1X liquidation preference. Employees who joined in the last 5 years if they got options are fucked. If they have RSUs then they will take a fraction of their equity.

It sounds like investors got out okay, but employees got fucked big time. It's a terrible exit and Brex waited too long until their growth stalled.

[Ancalagon]

Hopefully those who joined took the all-cash option when that was still available.

[swyx]

sorry how did employees get fucked? theres more money after the 1.7B.

[margalabargala]

Yes, and it goes to the same people that the first 1.7B goes to.

The order of operations is not "everyone breaks even, then we start distributing profit".

The order of operations is "people with preferred stock (i.e. investors) get all their profit, and then employees get whatever's left over".

The fact that the amount of investment money put in is less than the sale price is meaningless. If you are an employee with options at a strike price of $5, and the common stock price is now $2, you're screwed.

[blindriver]

All the investors before 2019 got multiples of their investment.

So series B is worth about 250M and series C is worth about 625M. Series C-2 is worth about 1.5B. Series D is worth 425M and Series D2 is worth 300M because of LP. That's a total of 3B.

That leaves 2B for everyone else. Most employees are going to get fucked big time, especially the ones after 2019. They will get a small fraction of their RSUs and all their options will be worthless, if they had options.

[ivanbalepin]

According to Peter Walker from Carta:

> the company re-cap'd employees at a more realistic valuation a couple years back. So looks like all employees benefited here which is a major win. Respect to the founders for looking out!

[throwawa1]

Silicon Valley seems gamed against employees - it gets worse every year. Companies don't even share the cap table (including many YC companies).

[twelve40]

mostly if the founders are dickheads. That happens often, but may not be the case here.

[htrp]

I assume if you put in 100 mn at a 12 bn valuation in the last round, you're either getting 100 back at 1x pref or you're screwing over the common even more?

Considering the 12bn round was back in 21, I'd expect most of the employee base to be taking a haircut on the value of their options.

[bmau5]

assume it's the $1.2bn paid back to investors and then some divvying of the remaining amongst investors, founders, and common