"Earlier this week, Reddit disclosed in a corporate filing that CEO Steve Hoffman sold 500,000 shares, and Reddit COO Jennifer Wong also disclosed that she sold 514,000 shares."
If they believed in the platform, they would hold. Yeah looks like they are looking for bag holders.
To be fair (and you can probably see by my username I don’t like reddit anymore), I think it makes perfect sense to dispose of a fair portion of your shares in this situation.
Firstly, these asshats get paid part of their salary in shares, it’s natural to want to get more security on part of your income. Secondly, with how hard the price rose in the first couple of days, it makes sense. But people are welcome to disagree, of course.
How does that respond to the original idea, that is:
if they believed in the company, they would hold their stock.
You are not a genius for selling your company's stock after IPO, you are a grifter. Doesn't matter how many voting shares they have, doesn't matter how much more money they need - they do get paid in cash too, and they can borrow against the stock.
The point would be to diversify assets. You don't want to gamble everything on the hope the thing you believe in is successful. Not that I think they believe in the platform, but it is probably a smart idea to diversify no matter what. 25% of your shares does seem like a lot though.
If they sold at $50 a share, they pocketed over $25M each. Even after taxes, that is more than enough to live comfortably in any region's cost of living.
Them not selling isn't any more greedy. No matter what, they own the value of the stocks, whether they liquidate them or not. It's fucked up that anyone gets paid that amount in general, but they did and it's theirs. I don't know what you people would want from them. Isn't holding onto the shares hoping the value goes up even more greedy?
Imagine talking about faith in that situation. If you really think faith is a good base for financial decisions you better keep far away from the stock market.
I have nothing I'm willing to defend about Reddit management, I love the idea that they will end up penniless one day (though I'm sure that will not happen.)
I just don't think selling off 25% of one's shares (necessarily) means what has been suggested.
Keeping everything when these shares represent almost your entire net worth = I know with 100% certainty that this business will grow
Selling off 25% = I believe in the company, but I also acknowledge that there are many variables outside of my control that can affect the success of this company and I don't want those to have huge negative repercussions on my life.
I don't know how much of a bag holding exercise it is instead of a "treat yoself" moment. Half a million shares at $50/share is $25 mil, minus 50% taxes is $12.5 mil.
That isn't that much money in the bay area. Don't get me wrong. It's a lot. But that's just a $4 million house with another $1 million in furnishings, and I'm guessing a nice car or two. Take the other $6 mil and invest in a diverse portfolio. They've basically sold their stock so they can square away their personal lives.
I wasn't trying to make a "won't someone think about the shareholders" argument. Thanks for the strawman.
Really the gist of what I was after is "you'd do the same in their position". $12.5 mil is a lot, but we're not talking about $12.5mil/year. Its a one time sale. Someone that earns $100,000/yr just saw 125 years of income materialize in a couple seconds. But if you had the same opportunity, you'd probably do the same. If you would instead donate it to charity, please let us know which charities you'd donate to.
That's not how stocks work. Share value doesn't go to the company unless the company sells shares of itself that it owns. It also doesn't lose money from share value unless it buys shares. The value of shares goes to the shareholder when sold, and it comes out of the wallet of the buyer.
It's a show of a lack of faith maybe, but it doesn't effect the company at all except for the effect on stock value from selling if the company also decides to liquidate shares too.