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How Jeff Bezos makes ends meet on an $82,000 salary
Less than a week after Forbes sang the praises of his "modest $82,000 annual base salary," Jeff Bezos cashed in another 2.15 million shares of his Amazon.com stock, adding another $168 million to an earlier $135 million sale to boost his take for the last three months to a cool $300 million-plus. Not forgetting those less fortunate, Jeff also set aside 252 Amazon shares, or about .01 percent of last week's sales, for donation to a nonprofit.(Photo by Zhang Yong/ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
larry ellison
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the greediest of them all?
By adding up salary, bonuses and vested or sold equity, Forbes came up with a list of the top 12 richest tech CEOs. And taking over the No. 1 slot from Steve Jobs, who slipped to 11th, is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison — who also topped the list of all American CEOs with $192.9 million in compensation in just one year. Still, not enough to bump him up to 13th place on the world billionaire chart. But surely enough to help a whole lot of cash-strapped school districts. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
Microsoft owes Jerry Yang $3,000
The California State Controller's Office shows that Microsoft owes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang $3,008.46 in unclaimed dividend checks. The software giant has apparently been mailing the checks to Santa Cruz instead of a Yahoo office in Santa Clara. Is that why Yahoo hasn't yet responded to Microsoft's bid? [Forbes]
The California State Controller's Office shows that Microsoft owes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang $3,008.46 in unclaimed dividend checks. The software giant has apparently been mailing the checks to Santa Cruz instead of a Yahoo office in Santa Clara. Is that why Yahoo hasn't yet responded to Microsoft's bid? [Forbes]
anti-jackpot
Terry Semel lost $6.2 million working for Yahoo in 2007, but Sue Decker made almost $15 million
Any Yahoo can tell you that working at the troubled Web giant doesn't pay. But for former CEO Terry Semel, it really didn't. Last year, he made negative $6.2 million, Docu-Drama notes. The accounting oddity, uncovered in an SEC filing, has to do with stock awards he forfeited when he left the company last year. Don't weep for Semel: He still owns half a billion dollars in Yahoo stock, and has sold plenty, too. What shareholders may find more upsetting are the left-and-right raises Yahoo's board handed out to top Yahoo execs in 2007, a year whose horrible performance set up Yahoo for Microsoft's hostile bid. Here are the lowlights: More »
jackpot
John Battelle takes $22 million in fuck-you money
Anyone telling you that Federated Media, the online ad network which reps Boing Boing, GigaOm, TechCrunch and other blogs, has raised $50 million from investors is dead wrong. It's true, Oak Investment Partners and others paid $50 million for shares of Federated. But only half of that went to the company, we're told; the rest went to founder John Battelle and other employees. According to our source, Battelle's take was roughly 90 percent of the insider shares sold, or about $22 million. More »
1:00 PM on Wed Apr 30 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,937 views,
4 comments
Latest by moore850: Word on the street is, he'll lose most of that in one incredibly bad hand of poker at a suitcase gambling stand by Capitola beach. more »
jason calacanis
What kind of house does AOL's money buy?
Jason Calacanis once told us that he has "all the money." He got it from selling Weblogs Inc. — home of Engadget and Autoblog, among others — to AOL for $25 million. Curious to see what kind of home that kind of money buys in Los Angeles? Check out Kara Swisher's video tour of Calacanis's guest "cottage." Watch out for the bulldogs.
jackpot
Metacafe founders take their $5 million and go
Metacafe cofounders Arik Czerniak and Ofer Adler — neither involved with the company's day-to-day operations — will walk away from the company with $2.5 million each, according to TheMarker. If $5 million seems like a lot, remember that YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen each cleared $326.2 million selling out to Google and that Czerniak and Adler might have turned down a $200 million to $700 million offer from Yahoo. All of which makes it even more fun to watch the video embedded below, recorded just weeks after Google purchased YouTube, where Czerniak tries to convince Bambi Francisco that Metacafe is "the largest, most popular video site." More »
michael birch
Even Bebo's cofounder thinks AOL's $850 million is a joke
Poor AOL CEO Randy Falco. He believes that acquiring the social network Bebo for $850 million put AOL in a "leading position" in social networking. Everyone else thinks the buy was a joke — including Bebo cofounder Michael Birch. Asked at an event yesterday about the purchase price, Birch said, "850 million is an interesting number. It's a lot bigger than some numbers and a lot smaller than some numbers. It's not a prime number." Asked how AOL bid itself up to $850 million, Birch said $800 million of it was due Bebo's popularity in Fiji. "Fiji is an up-and-coming market," the Birch told the crowd. Don't wonder why he's so giddy. Birch and his cofounder, his wife Xochi, earned $595 million on the deal.
Ning raises $60 million for "nuclear winter"
A Fast Company cover story isn't the only inexplicable gift social-network startup Ning has received. After raising $44 million last July, Ning has raised another $60 million, cofounder Marc Andreessen reluctantly announced. (A regulatory filing uncovered by VentureBeat forced the news out of him.) Why the eight-figure round for a startup whose annual revenues are likely in the low seven figures? Andreessen says he wanted to "make sure we have plenty of firepower to survive the oncoming nuclear winter."
jackpot
John Battelle raises $50 million as AOL snatches away his prize
For once, tech publisher John Battelle has timed a bubble just right. With Wired, where he was a founding editor, he was too early; with The Industry Standard, the tech weekly which crashed and burned early in this decade, a bit too late. But with Federated Media, he's proved his dealmaking prowess. He's all but nailed what we hear is $40 million to $50 million in venture capital for the online-ad network , on a $200 million valuation. And this right before AOL bought Sphere, a blog search engine which, by a rough count, serves more than half of the pageviews Battelle sells to advertisers. More »
jackpot
Is Craigslist worth $5 billion?
Disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget pauses to dream up a fantasy valuation for Craigslist, and comes up with $5 billion. The numbers he relies on are faulty, starting with Craigslist's revenues. Blodget relies on a recent report by Classified Intelligence, which pegs its revenues for 2008 at an estimated $81 million. That's extremely low; insiders tell me the real figure for last year was in the range of $100 million to $150 million. More »
wantrepreneurs
Jon Fisher desperately wants you to know he sold a company to Oracle
Meet Jon B. Fisher, former CEO of three software companies, including security firm Bharosa. In the clip above, Mark Cannice of the University of San Francisco asks Fisher if he regrets selling Bharosa to Oracle. Fisher does not. He tells us, "Bharosa returned 6X to investors in 3 years." Given Bharosa raised $2 million and that a company at its stage typically sells 25 percent of the company to outside investors, figure Fisher sold to Oracle for maybe $48 million. It's decent bank, but we're starting to wonder if Fisher — not a Bharosa founder — didn't get enough equity for himself before the sale. More »
jackpot
Microsoft exec Bob Muglia set to win $1.6 million bet against stock
When insiders sell, most market watchers take it as a sign that the wheels are coming off. What to make, then, of Microsoft SVP Bob Muglia's latest stock move? Muglia, a stalwart cheerleader for Microsoft's Windows Vista, owns 6.7 million Microsoft options rendered worthless by the drop in its stock price. But he also has a sure way to profit from the slumping price. Last October, Muglia wrote a call option requiring him to sell $1.6 million worth of Microsoft shares, but only if the stock hit $32.50. The option expires on April 18; unless Microsoft shares rise dramatically in the next two weeks, Muglia's set to pocket whatever money he made selling the option. A wise move, except for the appearance of betting against his employer.
jackpot
Paying taxes is for the little people who earn wages
Disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget has found a new reason to fawn over the Valley's billionaires: Jerry Yang, Steve Jobs, and Larry and Sergey pay themselves $1 salaries. Hank, haven't you heard that there's a crisis in Social Security? The $1 salary is the perfect combination of tax dodge and publicity stunt. Jerry, Steve, and the Google boys pay 6 cents of their buck towards Social Security, and a penny for Medicare. Those taxes aren't charged on investment income — the kind generated when a founder sells his shares. "It would be nice if we started to see the same gesture from chief executives in the rest of corporate America," writes Blodget. Sure, if you want to make sure the rest of us get nothing when we retire.
jackpot
Hong Kong tycoon doubles Facebook stake as employees eye exits
Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong telecom billionaire, has upped his stake in Facebook, investing another $60 million in the social network. His new total: $120 million, or half of Microsoft's stake. The valuation: Still $15 billion. All the cash flowing into Facebook has gotten some Facebookers thinking about selling. CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains too cash-poor to buy his own house, but a handful of employees are cashing out. More »
jackpot
Amid stock downturn, Google's execs its biggest winners
Shareholders watched Google shares plummet by nearly $300 since peaking last fall. Those investors will hardly be reassured by the cheery news in Google's newly released annual report and proxy statement. The company did earn $13.29 a share, and Valley job-seekers also benefitted: The company added over 6,000 full time employees to its payroll last year. But who's raking in the cash? Not founders Larry Page or Sergey Brin, who only receive equity as income. CEO Eric Schmidt took home a salary of $480,000, slightly less than last year. CFO George Reyes — whom the company is actively trying to oust from his comfortable perch— took home millions in salary and stock last year, as did senior vice presidents Jonathan Rosenberg, Omid Kordestani and Alan Eustace. Here's how they scored: More »
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