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Comment by meterplech | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me the biggest allegation here is that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to dilute his shares when he was diagnosed with cancer the first time.

I hate to seem callous here, but, that might've completely made sense. God forbid if Allen had died, the company, still pre-IPO startup whose main product was MS-DOS (pre Office or any version of Windows) would want its shares controlled by people with business interests in the company. When you are a startup you want to align incentives properly and yes, people who are unfortunately unable to contribute, even if it's through no fault of their own probably shouldn't have huge amounts of stock.

Besides that allegation I don't really know what else here is that negative on Bill Gates.

edit: MS-DOS not MS-DOC. Mistyped

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There would be nicer ways to shield the company from that. They could talk to Allen, make sure that, in the possible event of his death, they would take care of his family in case the company succeeded.

In all my commercial ventures, my partners were also my friends. I would never, ever even entertain doing something like this to a perfectly healthy partner, much less one with a serious health problem.

I agree that you shouldn't screw a friend over obviously. But, there does need to be some way to make sure equity of an early stage company is in the hands of the people who are most incentivized for its success. Ideally Gates would offer a contract where he could buy shares from Allen to make sure he and his family was taken care of. But- I do understand the logic of trying to ensure key stakeholders in the company are leading it.

Targeted dilution of individual shareholders seems extremely shady. Almost seems like it should be illegal.

As noted by someone else, they should have simply retained first option to buy any portio of Allen's shares in the case where his shares would change hands. Actually that should probably apply to all major insiders.

Intentionally trying to dilute his shares, if this did indeed happen, is tantamount to stealing in my eyes.

I dunno. It looks like Allen's contributions as a co-founder back in the DOS days were very significant. I think he deserved at least a face-to-face, open and honest discussion.

That's completely fair. I agree with that. But, we don't know if this was a discussion between the two (Gates and Ballmer) with the intent of discussing it with him afterward.

I think you are right. In my opinion you have to handle each situation separately. So you dilute because it's best for the company, and then you also (assuming you have the means) take care of your friend monetarily and help lighten the medical expense load for him.

That MS-DOC program didn't sell a single copy.

That's why even founders should be on a vesting schedule.

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