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Comment by newbie578 | Hacker News Reader

This is surreal to read. Can anyone please explain how is it possible for the board to value so much someone?

I don't see what can possibly justify this kind of compensation...

not so much the board as Brian Armstrong himself. he seems to have a history of very dubious C-suite hires, including acquihiring Balaji's Earn.com for $100m and constantly talking up his impact when it turned out to be.. a shitty e-learning platform (https://www.coinbase.com/learning-rewards)

(i know i sound negative about all this but if i'm mistaken about Earn please correct me)

Balaji pulled off a heck of a heist himself. Partner at A16Z, spin out some bizarre crypto oil-cooled mining company, pivot like 4-5 times, and then have Coinbase, the company with your VC partners on the board "acquire" your failed startup for 10 figures after it's already burned through over $100M of investor money. These dudes just begging the SEC to get involved in VC deals.

How many of this industry’s thought leaders are similarly scummy?

Let's see: Chris Dixon (a16z crypto), Chamath (pump and dump extraordinaire), and basically everyone on https://twitter.com/VCBrags .

Especially:

https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1588954788334800896 and https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1572301007383851009

https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1608178902664642561

dont take away agency from Brian. by all accounts an excellent founder, enthusiastically supporting Balaji even after Earn was effectively shut down. Brian's vocal support is the one reason I still doubt my own assessment of Earn.

His equity was presumably worth much less when it was given to him.

He joined around a year ago, it is now worth 72% less than when he joined.

Possibly part of the reason to depart? A $70M comp cut and little hope of it recovering seems a good reason

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