How I forgot I gave away .75% of my company
“Hey Adam — give me a call when you have a sec. I have some good news for you.”
We hadn’t chatted in a few months, but when I texted my former co-founder Adam that message last week, he rang me within 30 seconds. The good news I shared with him? He owns .5% of my growing company, even though it’s been 2 years since we actively worked together, and we really only spent 6 months closely collaborating.
Here’s how it went down:
In May, 2016, I signed the incorporation documents for SlingShot Inc. I’d spent a few months tinkering away on a frequent flyer / points and miles product, saw the tiniest bit of traction, and decided to turn it into a full time business. Along the way, I was introduced to Benjamin Gleitzman, who became a technical advisor to SlingShot. Ben is a wonderful human being, and he quickly introduced me to his Massachusetts Institute of Technology frat brother of years past.
Meet Adam. We got along great, I quickly realized he was an extremely talented developer, product manager, and all around technical mind, and we set off on the long, winding, never-simple road to becoming co-founders.
I had no money to pay him, and Adam had a family and a full-time job. I would have loved to bring him on immediately, but it simply wasn’t an option. And so, in the interim, as I worked to get to a place where I could bring him on as a full partner in the business, we signed a document that made him a technical advisor. This contract gave him a .5% equity stock grant, vesting over two years, with no cliff.
It’s another blog post — but the company just didn’t work. I spent 18 months banging my head against the wall, and wasted a lot of money I didn’t have en route to $30k in credit card debt (while learning some really great lessons along the way). We shuttered the business in late 2017 after losing our primary source of revenue. Adam and I remained friends, catching up on GChat every once in a while, and I spent a year exploring new ideas, while consulting for Airbnb and other orgs to pay the bills.
A year later, in August of 2017, I started a new venture — Bolt Travel, where we are focused on thoughtfully creating community around less structured, more flexible adventures like sailing in Greece, Norway, and the Caribbean, rooftop tent camping safaris in Southern Africa, and overlanding down the Baja Peninsula.
Along the way, Adam has been more than happy to help with technical fixes (DNS, I shake my fist at you). Just as a friend. Because he’s a good guy.
This (now 2 year-old) venture is organized under the same corporate umbrella and structure as SlingShot — it’s SlingShot Inc, DBA Bolt Travel. (We had all of our legal stuff tied up tight, thanks to my friend Gregory Keith Miller). I have been laser-focused on revenue, instead of raising money, so our cap table didn’t cross my mind — until last month, when AVL Growth, our CFO firm, asked me about it during our onboarding process. (thanks David Spinks for this recommendation!)
Suddenly, I remembered Adam and Ben’s advisory grants. I hadn’t thought of them in forever. When you shutter a company, those kinds of things are easy to forget. It’s not the most pleasant process, and sending out a letter cancelling an advisor’s grants for a company that (at the time) was effectively worth zero just didn’t cross my mind.
That .75% of the company is by now fully vested. While I may have granted them .5% and .25% of SlingShot Inc almost four years ago, by contract collectively they own .75% of Bolt Travel, which is doing a hell of a lot better than SlingShot ever did. If we execute, those grants could be worth millions someday.
So here’s the thing — I’m OK with it.
Adam and I quickly agreed he’d advise us on technical issues moving forward, for the same amount of time that lapsed since he stopped actively participating on it and before I contacted him a couple weeks back. Ben has (likely) been off on an adventure somewhere around the world (seriously, that guy gets around), and when I hear from him, I’m sure we’ll figure something fair out.
Increasingly, I understand that business is messy. Things that from the outside appear to be organized and clean are often not close to straightforward. Let’s face it: I wouldn’t be smiling if two people I didn’t respect and like, who hadn’t gone above and beyond to help push us forward, owned a full .75% of this fast-growing toddler of a company.
That’s the benefit of working with good, kind, reasonable people. They generally just want to help and when things do fall into the cracks, you find ways to work them out. Thanks Adam and Ben for being awesome.
