Juno Drivers ‘Gett’ Only Pennies Following $200M Acquisition

<i>“In a nutshell, we’re going to be nice. We’re going to be ethical. We’re going to be respectful of our drivers,” he said. In that talk, Marco said his partners planned to give drivers a stake in the company. In fact, it had suggested it would set aside 50 percent of the company’s founding shares for drivers, as we previously reported.</i><p><i>Initial reports on the deal indicated that all shares accumulated by drivers would be nullified in the acquisition</i><p><i>Another driver forwarded us a letter that offered $251 for 14,173 restricted shares, a value of roughly $0.02 per share. This post[0], shared on the UberPeople forum, shows an estimated value for restricted shares at $0.20 each, last July.</i><p>At least Uber isn&#x27;t hiding behind some sign claiming to be ethical.<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uberpeople.net&#x2F;threads&#x2F;juno-refer-a-driver-get-a-bonus.92609&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uberpeople.net&#x2F;threads&#x2F;juno-refer-a-driver-get-a-bon...</a>

Serious question: Is there any way at all for a minority shareholder to avoid getting royally screwed in situations like these? Or are they completely at the mercy of the majority to be very nice and decent and not just give them the short end of the stick?<p>Would it e.g. provide any benefit at all to have a clause about dilution not reducing ownership share more than the majority owners, or would it be possible to weasel out of such an agreement too? How do the rich and powerful do business with each other if agreements are this open to interpretation and backstabbing?

The phrase &quot;nullify a share grant&quot; has no legal meaning that I&#x27;m aware of.<p>There are some semi-legal ways to do this, eg dilute some shareholders by issuing a ton of new shares and give them to other existing shareholders (you see this done in The Social Network). However, minority shareholders do have rights and they can sue if there is no basis for the new grants.<p>What Juno seems to be doing is asking people to sign away both (1) their shares and (2) their right to sue in exchange for around 10% of what they previously thought was the cash value of their shares.<p>I suspect the reason for this is that the acquisition is taking place in shares of Gett stock, not cash, and Gett doesn&#x27;t want 10,000 small shareholders on its cap table, but also doesn&#x27;t have $50 million of cash lying around to pay these drivers, so it&#x27;s trying to pay them $5 million and make the problem go away.

Interestingly enough, just lately their landing page mentioned &quot;50% reserved for drivers&quot; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170203175819&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gojuno.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170203175819&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gojuno.com...</a>, but no that claim is gone

at what point do we stop calling these companies &quot;ridesharing&quot;? The idea of ridesharing and the sharing economy seems completely incompatible with Uber, Lyft and friends, who are all basically private car hire firms.

None of the articles mention the amount that Juno raised, so it&#x27;s possible that this sale is smaller than the liquidation preferences.

Here&#x27;s the thing I really don&#x27;t get: This is going to get out. This is going to taint the brand. Why do something as shitty as this? Why do startups do this? Is it honestly that hard to be ethical, and pay out what you promised?

Uber, Lyft, Juno. All the same.

HN headline hurts my brain. Original is a stupid pun, but at least it makes sense.<p>Juno Drivers ‘Gett’ Only Pennies Following $200M Acquisition