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Comment by immichaelwang | Hacker News Reader

What are the downsides of this?

It looks like founders and VCs get the majority voting shares by default. It's not clear if it's good for the company or not, but it helps founders to pick it as the stock exchange to go to.

The slow vesting shedule makes a lot of sense though.

Which it should be noted happens in practice a lot with tech companies hitting exchanges already, so it's not a huge change from the norm.

Where did you read about the slow vesting schedule

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/sec-approves-new-silicon-val...

The interview with Eric Ries is a bit clearer than the article, but it still misses a lot of details.

It could be a medium-sized waste of resources.

The central thesis is somewhere between "controversial" and "improbable".

To wit: current markets being too focussed on the short term does not align too well with Uber, a company bound to lose money for at least another three to five years under the best assumptions, being valued as it is.

opening up the opportunity to take money from a whole new source, by accepting money from unsophisticated investors who dont understand what they are getting into and losing liquidity on their investment at best and losing their money at worst

As long as investors don’t get bailed out, who cares? I would have loved to invest in Uber, Lyft, etc back in 2014 when I knew they were going to be big. It also would have sucked to invest in Yik Yak, but you win some you lose some. As long as they are selective enough to not list outright scams, I say let people take their own risks.

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