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I had a similar experience although over a shorter time horizon. I was in a dispute with a corporation which prompted me to pore over every word in every previously signed agreement. I discovered, due to an obvious typo in a stock option agreement, more options had vested than had been intended. After some pushback, they eventually relented and awarded me the options.
Given the amount of money involved, it was worth engaging lawyers to see if NVIDIA would pay you some money to save the hassle of dealing with it, but there is and was zero prospect of this ever being awarded in your favor by a court since the options expired.
https://colo.to/exercise.pdf
They exercised 15,625 options of the 25,000. The OP sent $781.25 to NVIDIA. The remaining 9,375 options were not exercised, they expired 90 days after April 16th 1996.
Only in hindsight, 30 years later, has the OP realized that the other 9,375 had vested due to ambiguous wording in the agreement. The article is about the 9,375 that were not exercised.
Taking care of the human is not good for cApiTaLisM
That was my first thought as well.
When someone dismisses your interpretation it serves to understand it well.
Additionally: A contractual mistake would likely not return specific performance (stock) unless special conditions were met.
For example: a company makes a stock mistake, you observe that at the time it happens, but then do nothing until you see the stock increase in value. Company could assert you _were_ due the stock but the value of that stock is determined by the time-of-breach and they return you $.
Unless you had a substantial claim to voting interest would probably be monetary reward!
NYL
I don't. I blame on the ADHD. Or maybe its laziness.
people will go to _amazing_ lengths not to read something new or unfamiliar. That feeling of "i must be dumb" is most often the reason people avoid it, and is just the normal part of learning something new.
but aside from that, a question I and many are wondering,
1.) is there a surefire guarantee that the case would be dismissed by court or that there is just a low chance of it being done.
Because if Nvidia knows this, then they are saying so sue us as a way to do just that (deterring you), but if the statute of limitations don't particularly apply though (as some have suggested here), then isn't litigation still a good path?
Also, instead of litigating with your own money, I imagine that there must be a market for cases like these who can litigate for you and win a portion of the money as well without requiring litigation fees from you. (A lot of hackernews comments are about this)
At best: you actually win money. At worst: you don't (but that's where you currently are), so perhaps there's still a reason to try.
IANAL and you have contacted top lawyers, (so please correct me if I am wrong as I usually am.)
2: how do you feel about the whole situation? I imagine not everyone has sort of even the possibility of becoming almost an billionaire. Also, do you believe that there could be other people like you as well where because of some technicality/(statute of limitations), they too didn't get the money/stocks?
3: What are the life lessons that you would like to give to the next generation?
It's still so impressive to me that I can just ask questions to you on hackernews just like that, thanks for taking the time to read it and have a nice day, kind sir!
May I use your example if I give a talk at some point trying to impress upon the audience why they should actually read agreements before they sign them?
Perhaps we can call it as a form of legal hygiene so as to impart the habit to the next generation. (Please feel free to correct me or tell me if there's a more proper term to what I am referring as, as well but I like the intuition/metaphor of treating it as hygiene.)
Thank you and have a nice day :-D
No, at worst the court orders you to pay for the time spent by lawyers working for the company you sued. This option exists to nudge that calculation “it’s a million to one chance, but it might just work” away from filing lawsuits just for the hell of it.
Why would an American working in software in the mid 90s expatriate to Tonga, a tiny island nation, population ~100k, virtually no tech industry, with little or no internet back then? (assuming Eric is American).
Maybe a govt IT contract, but it sounds at odds to "working on various internet startup schemes".
(Retract the cheating dig if not applicable. Make it in the first place b/c I’m bummed when folks who make their money thanks to a country’s infra, laws, etc. don’t pay their fair share, at least in those cases when there’s so much you can even give back half and have immense riches.)
If he had held on to those, they would be worth even more than the additional 9,375 shares he was entitled to -- about $1.7 billion using the same numbers in the post.
My guess is that he probably sold them when they were worth a lot less then they are now, and would have done the same with the additional shares too.
Well quoted.
You’re not the only one who want to see this go somewhere.
Still massively sucks though. Not quite as bad as the guy who bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin but still a situation that would be impossible to ever get over.
These matters are not purely legal nor purely right and wrong.
They are personal and political too.
This is a fight you should have fought.
I don't have any inside info about this case obviously, but it's clear Nvidia would have ample motive to try to claw back whatever they could as mid 1996 was when they made their pivot after the disaster.
Again, not throwing around accusations here, just saying it may not be as cut and dried as "it was just an oops but everyone forgot about it for 30 years."
It seems like both you didn't caring about it during vesting or maybe they did a typo since it seems like you were vested over 4 years normally and the offer is over 4 years?
Anyway if someone did this to me this is pretty much grounds for an irreparable relationship. Though I guess it was worth the attempt for $1b.
If someone tried to claim what was contractually theirs?
Of course, contracts are legally binding, but that's completely different from my perception / evaluation of someone - if the mutual understanding was over 4 years and then 30 years later you find the typo and come back to bite me then yes it is 100% an irreparable relationship.
Yes I would think better of them if they came back to bite if NVIDIA was a penny stock but probably nobody would bite them back if they found out it was worth $100 instead of $1B.
To be clear, the grant is the legally binding document regardless of intent (initial offer + vesting seems to imply 4 years), I would eat the typo if it was 30 years ago and chalk it off as a learned mistake (assuming it wasn't company altering).
Where did it come from? Well, I was curious how Bitcoin worked, so I set up a little mining rig and let it run at night on my work computer. So, other than my time, which I think I did on work's time, and the power, which I think I used work's power... I saw it as a free cup of coffee.
Honestly, I was just so happy to find a booth at a convention that actually took Bitcoin that I didn't mind the crappy exchange rate.
But anyway, I don't think regret is a particularly useful thing to hold onto. You can regret things you did, and you can regret things you didn't do. Either way, there's nothing you can do about it. It feels like baggage. Hold on to too much of it and you sink. You have to find a way to rise above it and keep moving forward. If you don't, you'll drown.
I say that as someone who learned this lesson the hard way.
I spent 3+ years in a legal battle with an insurance company and their contractor that ultimately cost me more than $500,000. I was right. Period. I had been wronged. Period. The contractor and insurance company both lied and I had ample documentation of them doing so, and doing shoddy work. What I was asking for was completely reasonable. But who cares? That's not how the courts or the legal system work.
What I learned from the process was that most people just get screwed over when they go up against big companies. And it's not even close. I'd guess something like 75% of people who get into a fight with an insurance company end up losing -- and it's probably higher than that if you factor in the people who simply give up. Eventually, you have to decide whether continuing to fight is worth what it's costing you.
There will always be another "I almost caught the fish!" story to tell. Life is long. Learn from the mistakes, let go of the things you can't change, and do your best to keep moving forward.
Some situations just suck. Best not to think about it them too much.
OP was not given all of the shares earned at the time decades ago and didn't realize that they should've been payed out, but after engaging in a lawsuit realized that the court would likely not grant the case give the statute of limitations.
Kinda like all the Sony game 'owners' not carefully reasing the legally binding contracts they're always signing realizing that they are not in fact purchasing a gauranteed lifetime access to the game.
Whether they "earned" them is disputable — the offer letter specifies one vesting schedule (25% every year), the "cover sheet" from the options agreement specifies other (25% every _quarter_).
So — the OP got the shares he was promised in the original offer letter; but later discovered that some of the documents he later got implied that the vesting schedule should be accelerated compared to what he agreed to.
I think that is probably the funniest way possible to earn a billion dollars; but whether he's "owed" that money/shares, is... up for a debate.
I learned a long time ago that everyone has a story of missed mega-riches in Silicon Valley. I have a few of my own :-)
I don't know your situation in life, but if your experience is anything like mine I reckon you've probably made the right decision.
I’m in a small game dev group and I very much enjoy seeing how older engineers tackle problems.
Did anything progress past tech demos?
So the dispute is basically over whether NVIDIA incorrectly prevented a guy from buying $468.75 worth of additional founder-era stock, which through NVIDIA's subsequent growth and splits became approximately $1 billion of stock thirty years later.