Acquisition

I just learned that my former employer, company X, has been acquired by company A.

When I left company X this year, I ended up exercising all my stock options.

Now, before you get all excited for me, you need to learn about something called a "liquidation preference." When a venture capitalist invests, say, $10 million in a company, often they will include a clause in the contract that says "if the company gets bought out, we get the first $10 million dollars, right off the top." Or $20 million. Or $30 million. Or more. So if the company is bought for, say, $15 million and the liquidation preference is for $20 million, the VC gets all the $15 million and everyone else gets $0.

That everyone else would include current and former employees, of course.

Given what I know about the company's situation, I would sort of suspect that whatever it was bought for is less than whatever the liquidiation preference is.

So I shouldn't really looking at this sale to provide me with enough money to buy, say, a cup of tea.

But you never know. For reasons I'm not going to mention, this hasn't been a terribly good week; I can definitely use whatever good news (not to mention opportunities for fantasizing) that I can get.

Update: I just talked to a former co-worker, and I'm getting $0. Oh well, at least I get tax write-off this year.