Here’s the interesting part:
The wild card here is that these stock purchasers, who will pay the IPO price for their shares, won’t be bound by “lock-up agreements” that require company officers and employees to hold their shares for a fixed period of time – potentially as long as six months. That means Redditors and moderators will be able to sell their shares immediately if they wish.
While it’s not clear from the perspective just how many of those 1.76 million shares will end up in the hands of Reddit users, the number is likely large enough for those users to exert meaningful pressure on Reddit’s share price. The main concern is that a surge of demand for shares that aren’t locked up could create a sudden run-up in the share price, followed by an equally sharp decline once the initial excitement wears off and short-sellers – investors who effectively place bets that a stock will decline – begin to gather.
I found this statement amusing:
“Mishandling this process could result in (Reddit) alienating their most ardent supporters, potentially turning them into critics,” warned Deiya Pernas, co-founder of Pernas Research.
(Is he not aware of what already happened back in June?)
Internet Archive version here
Honestly I don’t think spez is too bright.
He first taunted people some days ago by essentially admitting to having kompromat on most users… Which is the number one thing not to do when you have kompromat. You make sure the target knows, but you also absolutely deny it to anyone else, so you won’t be scrutinised, and cannot be sued for blackmailing… 🤷♂️
But then he went ahead and allowed ads to be exactly similar to user submitted content, which, again, is not something you want your users to know about, as it is definitely destroying the last remaining shreds of trust that anyone might still have in reddit…
And, finally, he goes ahead with an IPO, knowing fully that the most potent user centric trading community is from reddit, and that they successfully fucked with several established brokers and traders already. All WSB needs to do at this point is set up a back-up community, probably on discord or some shit, and they will literally be able to own reddit.
What is he, trying to make musk look smart?
I’ve sometimes wondered whether spez has kompromat on Reddit’s owners; it’s hard to imagine a CEO in spez’s position not getting sacked after what happened last summer.
He has actually expressed admiration for Musk, after the Twitter takeover.
I’d bet WSB fucks everything up even if they’re trying to be helpful.