This is a badly inaccurate description of how liquidation preferences work, both mechanically and also with respect to what's "market."
First, it's exceptionally unusual to see anything more than a 1x liquidation preference (i.e. investors receive their initial investment back before anyone else gets paid) among well-funded companies. It's somewhat common to see a 6-10% interest rate added on top, but a 3x liquidation preference is the VC equivalent of a payday loan.
The other component is whether the liquidation preference is "participating" or "non-participating." The easiest way to think about that is that a participating preference receives its initial investment back out of the sale proceeds, then shares in the remainder of the profits alongside the common stockholders. A non-participating preference is like a "greater-of" - basically downside protection in the event that the company is sold for a much lower than expected amount.
Suppose Jet's received $800m in funding like you said, and suppose the investors have gotten pretty aggressive terms - call it 6 rounds of funding that each took 20% post-money, all of which have a 1x liquidation preference and are getting 10% interest. Let's say the interest takes the preference to $1 billion because we're more or less making up numbers at this point, but we're in the right ballpark.
So the common stockholders (founders and employees) own 26% of the company at this point (.8^6), and a billion dollars comes off the top of the $3 billion sale amount. The common stockholders would therefore receive about $520 million.
The Walmart stock is publicly traded, so it's a lot like getting cash (though it may be subject to a short lock-up in a deal like this). Companies like to do combination cash/stock deals for a variety of reasons.
> First, it's exceptionally unusual to see anything more than a 1x liquidation preference (i.e. investors receive their initial investment back before anyone else gets paid) among well-funded companies
I've had options zero-out because the company, after investing with absolutely no preference given (which was part of what induced me to join), they took another round with preference funding at greater than 1x.
By "zero out," do you mean they were previously valuable and then dropped below their strike price after accounting for the > 1x preference? That sucks and I'm sorry it happened to you. It's still pretty unusual though.
Curious to hear - were any of the following factors in play: (i) the company was struggling to stay afloat, (ii) the company was located outside SF/NYC, (iii) the company had less-experienced founders?
The company was sold and my purchased shares were worth $0.00.
The founders had secured, until I joined, funding coming in without any preferences at all, or so management told me repeatedly. I don't know when that changed, or maybe management was lying to me all along.
First, it's exceptionally unusual to see anything more than a 1x liquidation preference (i.e. investors receive their initial investment back before anyone else gets paid) among well-funded companies. It's somewhat common to see a 6-10% interest rate added on top, but a 3x liquidation preference is the VC equivalent of a payday loan.
The other component is whether the liquidation preference is "participating" or "non-participating." The easiest way to think about that is that a participating preference receives its initial investment back out of the sale proceeds, then shares in the remainder of the profits alongside the common stockholders. A non-participating preference is like a "greater-of" - basically downside protection in the event that the company is sold for a much lower than expected amount.
Suppose Jet's received $800m in funding like you said, and suppose the investors have gotten pretty aggressive terms - call it 6 rounds of funding that each took 20% post-money, all of which have a 1x liquidation preference and are getting 10% interest. Let's say the interest takes the preference to $1 billion because we're more or less making up numbers at this point, but we're in the right ballpark.
So the common stockholders (founders and employees) own 26% of the company at this point (.8^6), and a billion dollars comes off the top of the $3 billion sale amount. The common stockholders would therefore receive about $520 million.
The Walmart stock is publicly traded, so it's a lot like getting cash (though it may be subject to a short lock-up in a deal like this). Companies like to do combination cash/stock deals for a variety of reasons.