Twitter Is Said to Buy Employee Stock With Half of $800 Million in Funding

Re:Twitter Is Said to Buy Employee Stock With Half of $800 M... by lpolovets on Sunday July 24, 2011 @11:14PM (#2801157)

I'm very much a layman with regard to SEC rules, but I believe there's a rule that says you have to go public if you have 500+ shareholders. So, if 100-200 employees are willing to sell all of their stock now, does that mean Twitter gets to avoid being hit by the SEC rule for another 6-12 months?

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Re:Twitter Is Said to Buy Employee Stock With Half of $800 M... by jackowayed on Sunday July 24, 2011 @11:26PM (#2801192)

As I recall, it's not that they force you to go public, it's that they force you to start reporting a lot of information publicly (revenue, etc.) similarly to how public companies have to.

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Re:Twitter Is Said to Buy Employee Stock With Half of $800 M... by idoh on Monday July 25, 2011 @01:55AM (#2801517)

So you get the downside of being public but not the upside.

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Re:Twitter Is Said to Buy Employee Stock With Half of $800 M... by teej on Monday July 25, 2011 @01:15AM (#2801448)

I find it unlikely that a company would reduce shareholders via an employee buyback. Employees arent likely to, and may not be allowed to, sell all of their stock. Also, the employees will become shareholders again if they have unvested shares waiting in the wings.

It's also very standard for a growing company to switch to Restricted Stock Units as an employee incentive, holders of which do not count towards the magic 500.

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