Memo to Robinhood traders: “Bankruptcy” usually means the equity gets wiped out

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Elon Theranos Esq.

Quick primer on how it works, given Hertz is about to pull the world’s first Initial Bankruptcy Offering: The senior debt holders are first in line Subordinated debt holders are next in line Creditors, suppliers, vendors, including employees and pension funds are in this line Equity holders (this means you) are the very last in line and they get a fraction whatever is left, which is often NOTHING Good luck in the scramble to buy Hertz…

Siri: What is a “Unicorn circle jerk”?

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Elon Theranos Esq.

Carta, a unicorn that makes dashboards for managing equity investments in other unicorns is laying off staff and sniffing out a cash injection from existing backers. Bloomberg reports that the company is seekng a $200 million investment from existing investors at a $3 billion valuation, up from 1.8B last year. Somewhat incongruent with the “growth story” picture that normally garners such a sharply higher round, Carta is laying off employees. They just axed 161 people…

WeCash-out, before IPO

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Elon Theranos Esq.

The WSJ today reported on how WeWork co-founder and CEO Andrew Neumann has extracted $700,000,000 in share sales and loans from his money-losing, pre-IPO unicorn. So far Neumann has purchased 4 homes around New York, funded an elementary school his kid goes to, and paid $14,000,000 for a 13,000 squarre foot crib in the Bay area that has a guitar-shaped romper room. He also buys properties and leases them back to WeWork. All very confidence instilling for…

Canada’s “Disrupted”, eh

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Elon Theranos Esq.

The inaugural post of this blog was a review of Dan Lyon’s “Disrupted”, which put a point to the unicorn economy, where money losing companies crowd out real businesses by sucking up all the oxygen in the space. That bubble hasn’t popped …yet, although it may this year. In the meantime, here is another personal account of life within some VC-darling branding darling, this time up here in Canada. Read it here…