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Comment by charlesdm | Hacker News Reader

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charlesdm·

It's possible to sell those shares on a secondary market, i.e. seed investors might have already cashed out by now.

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Except in Uber's case where they are famous for keeping tight control on secondary sales.

http://fortune.com/2014/06/20/uber-plays-hardball-with-early...

Since I don't have Uber shares, I wouldn't know. But that's how it usually works.

Can someone who does have Uber shares chime in anonymously here?

I can't find the link because the huge media churn makes it impossible to find anything that isn't the most recent story, but didn't they ban Chris Sacca from the Uber office for hanging around and buying secondary shares from people?

I think the lockdown happened after that.

You're probably thinking of Sacca and Twitter:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/27/jp-morgan-twitter-chris-sac...

He may have done the same for Uber, but I haven't heard anything about that at all.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/03/25/how-ventur...

"the Uber CEO got upset with Sacca for trying to repeat his Twitter move of buying up secondary shares in Uber from other initial investors."

Ah good eye, thanks, hadn't heard anything at all about that.

I wonder why management would want to keep anyone from bidding up the share price?

It starts to create a secondary market for the shares, which means over time a price gets set. So the next time they try to raise money, this price becomes an anchor point rather than whatever arbitrary price Uber tries to set based on perceived supply & demand.

Yeah, probably. Even though at first the secondary market props up the price, it is indeed a price.

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