vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Sorry, I didn't mean to knock your post.  I do think you have valid points.  I think it's great to see discussions on the pros and cons on the VC/Start-up world.  My previous work experience was at a start-up that made it big (sold 90% to News Corp at $400mm valuation), but was funded by angel investors, so it was a different situation.  I'm currently getting my MBA now so am looking at the space from both the VC perspective and the Start-up perspective.  VCs can provide real value to start-ups, and they can also harm them.  However, no one is forcing the start-ups to take VC money; most do because it provides a higher probability for a faster path to success.  The investment doesn't come free obviously, as you pointed out.  The hours are horrible and you lose significant control.  In many situations founders are taken away from the main leadership role.  That doesn't seem fair.  However, if someone sold the voting shares of their company, they are opting in for that risk.  The truth of the matter is that a lot of the people who are amazing at the ideas that birth the start-ups are horrible at the day-to-day management.  Sometimes VCs step in and make the necessary changes to ensure the best chance at company profitability.  Is it fair? Yes.  Does it suck for the person ousted, absolutely.  It's an oversimplification to say this is all bad or all good.  It all depends on the situation.  However, yes, there are VCs who are predatory and use their superior knowledge of how business, financing, and whatever else work to extract as much as they can from their portfolio companies.  Yet there are also some who honestly love the industry and want to help companies grow.    Your article's stance is good because it prompts a discussion.  However, as I originally felt, it does not do it as effectively as it could in my opinion.  That's awesome you got a ton of re-tweets, but as you say on your blog, it's about substance, not the glitter and rainbows.    Edit: Voting brigades don't count as glitter and rainbows?
While r/finance has some great advice and posters who are well versed in their fields, this appears to be a legal question and if you're really concerned about the legality, I would strongly advise you to check in with a lawyer, not an online internet commenter. While there is a lot of good content on this site, you do see comments where the person is completely talking out of their ass.  It would suck for you to raise concerns at your job, based on faulty 'legal' advice.
"We're not ""helping"" the company in a comparable sense to donating money to a non-profit.  As you wrote, investing in a company deals with ownership and in a sense, becoming a part owner of a company, even if it is a minor ownership, indicates that we sense it has some sort of value, whether that's ethical, financial or tangible value.  As investors, we should take responsibility and ensure that our voices are heard when voting occurs (sadly, not too common). EDIT: @thepassiveinvestor makes an excellent point that this paragraph only applies to IPOs: Keep in mind, when we purchase stock in a company, that money is used for business purposes.  It also signals value to the market as well, if enough money or enough investors buy the stock."
"Equity could mean stock options. If that's the case if the company makes it big, you'll have the option to buy stocks cheap (which can then be sold at a huge profit) How are you going to buy those without income?  5% equity is laughable. I'd be looking for 30-40% if not better without salary.  Or even better, a salary. To elaborate, 5% is fine, and even normal for an early employee taking a mild pay cut in exchange for a chance at return. That chance of any return on the equity is only about 1/20 (94% of startups fail) There is no reason for an employee to work for no pay. An argument could be made for a cofounder, with direct control and influence in the company to work for equity only, but it would be a /lot/ more (that 30-40%), or an advisory role (5% is reasonable)  I also just noticed you mentioned ""investing"" in the startup with cash. As an angel investor, I'd still expect far more than 5%, and preferred shares at that. More like 16-20%.  Read this for more info on how equity is usually split."
I would not be overly concerned unless they started contacting you directly on your personal time or it showed up on your credit report.  It is very likely that you are listed simply for their own records. This is correct for them to do, since you spoke to them in the past as an agent of your company. There should not be any legal connection to your personal finances.  If it continues to be a concern, I would question whether I wanted to work for such an employer. I do not know your entire situation, but this kind of misbehavior is a red flag if not addressed.
"The answer to your question is...it depends.  Depending on the state you, your friend, and the LLC are located in, it can be very easy to run afoul of state banking laws, or to somehow violate some other statute pertaining to the legal activities an LLC may undertake by doing something like a loan. It is not unusual (or illegal) for officers or employees of a business entity to be loaned money by the company they work for, so something of this nature wouldn't be an issue with regulatory agencies.  Having your LLC loan money to a friend who isn't an employee or officer of your LLC just might not be kosher though. The best advice I can give is that you should call the state banking commission or similar agency in your state and ask them whether what you want to do is alright.  The LAST thing you want is to end up with auditors or regulators sniffing around your business, even if you haven't done anything wrong, and you certainly don't want to run the risk of accidentally ""piercing the corporate veil"", as someone else here astutely pointed out. Good luck!"
I know my experience is anecdotal, but where I work I see this scenario playing out. Most of the people I work with, in a health care administrative role, have children *MY AGE*. In the entire corporate office  of ~50 people there is maybe 6 people in their 20's early 30's. As far as my role as an Accountant, I'm second in command at age 28. I report directly to the CFO who has a daughter my age.  These demographics seem problematic. I know my company isn't the only one that is top heavy with Baby Boomers and few Generation X or younger.
For one, the startup doesn't exist yet, so until March I will get nothing on hand, though I have enough reserves to bridge that time. I would not take this deal unless the start-up exists in some form. If it's just not yet profitable, then there's a risk/reward to consider. If it doesn't exist at all, then it cannot make a legal obligation to you and it's not worth taking the deal yet. If everything else is an acceptable risk to you, then you should be asking the other party to create the company and formalize the agreement with you. As regards reserves, if you're really getting paid in shares instead of cash, then you may need them later. Shares in a start-up likely are not easy to sell (if you're allowed to sell them at all), so it may be a while before a paycheck given what you've described. For a second, who pays the tax? This is my first non-university job so I don't exactly know, but usually the employer has to/does pay my taxes and some other stuff from my brutto-income (that's what I understood). If brutto=netto, where is the tax? This I cannot answer for Germany. In the U.S. it would depend in part on how the company is organized. It's likely that some or all of the tax will be deferred until you monetize your shares, but you should get some professional advice on that before you move forward. As an example, it's likely that you'd get taxed (in part or in whole) on what we'd call capital gains (maybe Abgeltungsteuer in German?) that would only be assessed when you sell the shares. For third, shares are a risk. If I or any other in the startup screw really, my pay might be a lot less than expected. Of course, if it works out I'm rich(er). This is the inherent risk of a start-up, so there's no getting around the fact that there's a chance that the business may fail and your shares become worthless. Up to you if you think the risk is acceptable.
"I was being a bit facetious, but in general the public accounting profession  should be dedicated to the public good. Any scope restrictions placed on the auditors while performing the engagement should immediately be reported by the staff to accounting management. Basically any shady acts of the client should be noted in the work papers and reported. There's a whole bunch of rules to tell an audit staff accountant when to go above their own seniors/management if there is collusion or fraud.   Scope restrictions, ie. ""Hey you can't go in the warehouse to count inventory"", depending on the severity could qualify the audit report, disclaimer of an opinion, or withdrawal from the engagement. Therefore it's the auditors responsibility to refuse to provide a false audit report to the public or otherwise users of the financial statements. They should never act in the manner most profitable for the firm when faced with an ethical dilemma.   Then there's practicality and most audit partners will do anything it takes to keep their largest clients. On the same coin, those clients want a clean bill of reference for their creditors. Long standing relationships are most vulnerable to letting things slide in favor of the client.   There are thousands of companies and even ones publicly traded. The government would have to grow exponentially to actually audit all of these companies. That'll never happen, they have no idea where their own money goes as long as the revenues cover the expenditures."
My company has a dashboard that basically does this. We select industries / companies we want to be notified of and we get an email in outlook when a new analyst note, research report, or SEC filing is posted on that industry or company.
IANAL.  In the UK, you (as a Director) would have obligations to minimise any tax liabilities under these two clauses:  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/174  Although I can't see the CPS bringing any cases of criminal charge against over-payment of taxes. It wouldn't be unrealistic to have a scenario where shareholders of a failed enterprise sued a Director who was negligent in minimising tax liabilities.  That said, I think the Starbucks strategy is flagrantly breaching the intent of the law, if not the letter.
For mine, that info's in the quarterly reports... and in the prospectus, which you should be looking at before you put money into the fund.
"@sdg - If you can be flippant, I can be pedantic. Insider Trading is not illegal. Any employee of a company can be an insider, yet most of their trades are perfectly legal. What is illegal is trading on Inside Information. Such information may be available to those within a company, or those who have some contact with an employee. In fact, if I am seated at a restaurant table and hear Bill and Warren talking about a purchase they plan to make, I am in possession of inside information and risk prosecution should I purchase shares and profit.  Often, a company will have a ""quiet period"" before earnings reports or potential stock-price-moving-news. During this time, employees are forbidden from buying or selling shares, excluding those that would be automatically bought in their retirement accounts or ESPP."
The only valid reason from a financial point of view is if the raise is a promotion or comes with conditions that are unacceptable to you. You may not want added supervisory responsibilties, for example. You need to use discretion when refusing advancement though, at places where I have worked, declining a raise or promotion is seen as a career killer for some circumstances.
Regardless of opinions on the subject matter, this is not an appropriate thing to do at work.  Edit: I'm not denouncing the act of voicing concerns; rather, I'm saying that posting a lengthy dissertation which runs counter to the company's public stance on diversity while said company is embroiled in a federal investigation regarding possible pay biases is not appropriate.
It's legal. In fact, they are required to do this, assuming you are in fact a HCE (highly compensated employee) to avoid getting in trouble with the IRS. I'm guessing they don't provide documentation for the same reason they don't explain to you explicitly what the income thresholds are for social security taxes, etc - that's a job for your personal accountant. Here's the definition of a HCE:  An individual who: Owned more than 5% of the interest in the business at any time during   the year or the preceding year, regardless of how much compensation   that person earned or received, or For the preceding year, received   compensation from the business of more than $115,000 (if the preceding   year is 2014; $120,000 if the preceding year is 2015, 2016 or 2017),   and, if the employer so chooses, was in the top 20% of employees when   ranked by compensation. There are rules the restrict distributions from plans like 401ks. For example, treasury reg 1.401a(4)-5(b)(3) says that a plan cannot make a distribution to a HCE if that payment reduces the asset value of the plan to below 110% of the value of the plan's current liabilities. So, after taking account all distributions to be made to HCEs and the asset value of the plan, everyone likely gets proportionally reduced so that they don't run afoul of this rule. There are workarounds for this. But, these are options that the plan administrators may take, not you. I suppose if you were still employed there and at a high enough level, a company accountant would have discussed these options with you. Note, there's a chance there's some other limitation on HCEs that I'm missing which applies to your specific situation. Your best bet, to understand, is simply ask. Your money is still there, you just can't get it all this year.
I understand where you're coming from but you're mostly just quoting the plaintiff's attorney. That's not going to be the source of unbiased information. Furthermore, I don't trust general news sources when it comes to complex financial reporting. I don't really even trust business journals as they are mostly filled with j degrees without real experience. Bankruptcy cases can get very complex and unpredictable because judge's have significant leeway; you really need to read the case opinion to see what really went down. I work in finance and deal with bankruptcies on a semi-regular case. I am on the buy side (the side that would be screwed in cases like this) so my inherent bias goes your way against poor management.   If this guy actually moved assets from company 1 to company 2 at a non-arms length transaction then that is misconduct and assets can be recovered from company 2 usually. If Learning Annex was pari passu with Robert and he pulled dividends out to himself, that is misconduct that will be punished by a bankruptcy court. If he did these things they are not smart business practices, and will be punished.  Your condescension does not help your case. I most likely know far more about this topic than you, as I have seen the nuances corporate bankruptcies take on in the real world. I just don't trust grossly oversimplified reporting in a case that is ongoing.
Future job offers can go up or down depending on your disclosure, people can interpret it as bragging... maybe you could just use a percentage?
"If I were in your shoes (and one time I was), I would not talk ""about what I am doing"" unless I am specifically asked or if it's something that could possibly help the C-level exec... instead I would talk about what HE is doing. Ask him what problems he is currently facing (in the organization). This will give you insight as to what's currently on his mind and the challenges he's currently trying to overcome -- it will help you in your efforts at the company, if you keep it in the back of your mind that this is what is trying to be achieved by the big guys. Ask him where he sees the company in the long term. This will help reinforce and clear up the ideas you're keeping in the back of your head from the previous question you asked. Ask him why he hasn't gotten to that point already if the goal he mentioned seems like something that isn't that difficult to accomplish. This will pose as a difficult question for himself to formulate an answer to, where he will have to self-evaluate whether or not he is behind the curve or ahead of the game. Mention things you have done well in the past that play into any of the troubles he's currently facing or about to be facing soon -- so he knows he can directly call on you if he needs that particular something done (bonus points if it's a specialization). Don't waste your time on pleasantries and basic discussion. If you do talk about pleasantries because he brought it up, find out his interests and see if you have any in common by location, subject or any shared contacts. The C-level exec you are going to be sitting with, has limited time, but he has chosen to sit with you (and possibly others) when he could be doing other things. Use it to your advantage and ask him questions about why certain things are being done the way they are, especially if you think they're inefficient. You never know, you might just get directly put in charge of fixing those inefficiencies, which, since it's more responsibility, would be a great addition to your resume. Also, research current news involving the company, and mention it (if appropriate, not just out of nowhere). It shows you're on top of the game, maybe not in rank, but definitely in understanding."
There is no right and wrong answer to this question. What you and your business partner perceive as Fair is the best way to split the ownership of the new venture.  First, regarding the two issues you have raised: Capital Contributions: The fact that you are contributing 90% of initial capital does not necessarily translate to 90% of equity. In my opinion, what is fair is that you transform your contributions into a loan for the company. The securitization of your contribution into a loan will make it easier to calculate your fair contribution and also compensate you for your risk by choosing whatever combination of interest income and equity you see suitable. For example, you might decide to split the company in half and consider your contributions a loan with 20%, 50% or 200%  annual interest.  Salary: It is common that co-founders of start-ups forgo their wages at the start of the company. I do not recommend that this forgone salary be compensated through equity because it is impossible to determine the suitable amount of equity to be paid. I suggest the translation of forgone wages into loans or preferred stocks in similar fashion to capital contribution Also, consider the following in deciding the best way to allocate equity between both of you and your partner Whose idea was it? Talk with you business partner how both of you value the inventor of the concept. In general, execution is more important but talking about how you both feel about it is good. Full-time vs. part-time: A person who works full time at the new venture should have more equity than the partner who is only a part-time helper. Control: It is important to talk about control and decision making of the company. You can separate the control and decision making of important decisions from ownership. You can also check the following article about this topic at http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/04/05/what-every-founder-needs-to-know-about-equity/#726842f3668a
However, think that some basic financial information, organized like normal data (and, hey, this is not rocket science, but Excel 101) should be readily available for free. Maybe this is a project that needs to happen. With a mission statement of not selling people out later on. The closest thing out there may be Quandl (can't link; do a search), which provides a lot of charts for free, and provides a beautiful and flexible API. But its core US fundamental data, provided by Sharadar, costs $150 per quarter. So, not even a basic EPS chart is available there for free. With all of the power that corporations have over our society, I think they could be tabulating this information for us, rather than providing it to us in a data-dumb format that is the equivalent of printing a SQL database as a PDF! A company that is worth hundreds of billions on the stock market, and it can't be bothered to provide us with a basic Excel chart that summarizes its own historical earnings? Or, with all that the government does to try to help us understand all of these investments, they cannot simply tabulate some basic financial information for us? This stuff matters a great deal to our lives, and I think that much of it could and should be available, for free, to all of us, rather than mainly to financial professionals and those creating glossy annual reports. So, I disagree that yet another entity needs to be making money off providing the BASIC transparency about something as simple as historical earnings. Thank you for indulging that tangent. I know that SE prides itself on focused answers. A wonderful resource that I greatly appreciate.
"IANAL, but no, this is not sound legal advice. There are a few things that stick out to me as fishy. First off: you are calculating the 3% safe-harbor on the 2017 compensation limit of $270k, but limiting yourself to $53k in total contributions which is the 2016 limit. It's hard to tell what tax year you're working in here. If you're planning for 2017, fine, but if you're wrapping up 2016 then you need to use 2016 limits. Secondly (and this is something I think your counsel should know already): you don't take Employer contributions out of gross wages (box 1) on the W-2. They aren't even reported there in the first place! With your base scenario the 2 employees' W-2s would look like this: Employee A's W-2 Gross Wages (box 1) = 280,000 - 14,966.67 = 265,033.33 Employee B's W-2 Gross Wages (box 1) = 280,000 - 0 = 280,000 Elective deferrals are the only thing that should come out of wages. Not the SH 3% or Match. Thirdly: Retirement Plan expenses really aren't an ""above the line"" expense. They are not included in cost of goods sold. Even if you establish a ""pool"" for that expense, it's still not a direct cost attributable to the production of whatever your company sells. Also: Employee B should not have to contribute to the retirement account of Employee A! The only situation I can see where Employee A and B would be required to fund the match equally, were if Employee A & B are both 50% owners and the company has no funds of its own with which to fund the match. The company has obligated itself to fund the match, and if the company doesn't have any money then the money still has to come from somewhere (ie. the owners pony up more funds for the match they promised their employees, it just happens that the employees are also the owners). Even in this situation though, I still stand behind my first 3 points."
"I'm sorry, unless the employee has a contract he need not be rewarded during successful periods. However, the shareholder does have such a contract: the articles of incorporation.   Your quasi-communist ideology might characterize this situation as also unfair, but the fact remains that an investor is more valuable to a company than an employee is. Furthermore, an investor takes on risk, something an employee does not do. When I purchase CAT stock, I may very well lose everything. I am the last in the long line of creditors. However, the employee does not stand to lose anything, and is much higher in the line of creditors.   The days of Sinclair's ""The Jungle"" are over in this country. CAT has no obligation to pay above-market wages to its employees."