argigg

Are you claiming that, for any fraction x of traffic that must be dropped, overall subscriber utility is completely independent of what type of traffic is dropped?

There has been plenty of shame since the 80's, it didn't stop HIV then and it's not suddenly going to start working now.

Modafinil is Schedule IV in the US. The law may or may not be enforced with respect with to Modafinil, but possessing that drug without a prescription is illegal.

It's a little early to declare mission accomplished. The IPO hasn't actually happened yet. It will be hard to know if limited shareholder supervision reduces the value of the company. But if the IPO is a bust, a lot of people will wonder.

If the company is successful, they will pay a dividend or do a buyback later. For example, Facebook raised $16B in its IPO, and recently bought back $6B worth of shares at about 4 times the IPO price. The IPO was a great deal for common shareholders, despite their lack of control. Perversely, the comparison to Facebook might bias people to pay more for Snapchat shares with no voting power.

To state the obvious, the downside of early exercise is you might lose that money if the company does poorly.

A company that accumulated enough cash could, in theory, buy out its investors. This would allow an impatient VC fund to return cash without involving any other party. Not sure if a VC-backed startup has ever done this.