I am filthy rich, in a parallel universe …
I am a big SciFi geek, really addicted to that stuff, even though many of it is very absurd. For example, my favorite SciFi series is Stargate SG1 and in many of its episodes they play on the concept of parallel universes that are created every time we make a decision.
Well, if this theory is true, then my parallel amr (lets call him amr’, pronounced amr prime) is now filthy rich, sleeping on a beach in Hawaii, has a private jet, and houses across 5 continents. This is the story of amr and amr’.
In spring of 2000 both amr and amr’ existed in the same universe, at that time they were founders of a small 6-person startup called VivaSmart. Though the startup got some nice angel funding, it was not able to secure VC funding and bubble 1.0 was starting to crack. The founders decided to shop the startup around, and we got a nice offer from Excite@Home to buy the startup for $12M, not bad for such a small 1year old startup.
The acquisition deal was signed and we were working on finalizing the legal work and meeting with Excite engineering teams to see how we can integrate with them, learning their internal systems, etc. However, just one-day before we were supposed to move into the Excite@Home campus, we got sad news that Excite@Home is reneging on the deal. It was ugly and they ended up paying us $1M as penalty for backing out.
But now we were in a very bad situation, the bubble burst was becoming more evident, and we had closed our contractual relationships with all our customers (Productopia and epinions) as was dictated by the Excite@Home acquisition agreement. The $1M was enough to pay back the angel investors and shut down the company, so that was being discussed as a serious possibility, which obviously got me very concerned. I needed to line up another job so that I can continue to support my family (I had two children at the time).
So, I proceeded to shop my self around, and landed my self a very nice offer at Google, the offer was for an engineering position with $100K in salary, and 40,000 shares (these are shares, not options, since common share price was very low and you can just buy them outright). Now note that Google had two internal splits since then, so its really 160,000 shares in today’s GOOGs.
During the same time, our CEO, Charlie Oppenheimer, continued to shop the company around to other potential acquirers, and Yahoo came in and said they can buy us for $9M (which is really $8M since we had $1M in cash). Now I had a choice to make, should I say no to Google or go with the acquisition to Yahoo. Note that the acquisition value was mainly for the people and know-how, my self and Thai Tran being the core technology founders (Thai defected to Google in mid-2004 to be product manager for Google Local, rumor has it he got 20,000 GOOGs at $50 strike price).
If I did not go with the acquisition then that would have probably reduced the value of the company considerably, so if I took the Google offer I would have most likely pissed off my co-founders and investors at VivaSmart. I also did a lot of math and predictions with all the info available at the time, and Google seemed like a small startup that will eventually be acquired by Yahoo anyway since their main revenue stream (at the time) was to get money from Yahoo for every 1000 search requests that Yahoo sent to them. So I figured the right solution was to go to Yahoo, and this is where amr and amr’ got separated.
Its interesting that when Google sensed that I might turn their offer down, since the bubble was bursting, a very senior engineering chief over there (he has a short name that starts with U) sent me the following email:
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Google
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 11:33:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: u__@google.com (U__ _______)
To: aaa@CS.Stanford.EDUAmr,
Just as a reminder, in case you have any questions feel free to contact me. Also, in light of last week’s stock market, let me assure you that one (additional!) difference between us and the average “.com” is that we have a clear path to profitability. For example, this quarter’s loss was smaller than last quarter’s even though we have many more employees.
Regards,
- U__
You see, amr’ agreed to join Google, so he has 160,000 GOOGs which are now worth in the neighborhood of $60M (before long-term cap gain taxes). But that is just the original GOOG shares you get upon joining, you typically get more shares every year, so I figure amr’ is now rolling in about $100M of cash 
Amr envies amr’, but there are many new parallel universes to come. Even if amr never beats amr’ (on wealth basis), amr is still super happy to have a loving family, and that is priceless.
– amr
PS: There is another amr'’ in a parallel universe in which Excite@Home did not renege on the acquisition offer, he is very pissed . There is an amr”’ that did not sell VivaSmart, continued to grow it, and sold it for hundreds of millions ala PriceGrabber and Shopping.com. Finally, there are two more amrs from two more universe intersections with Google in 2002 and 2004, I might cover those in a later posting.
I’ve always admired your attitude towards this near miss; a lot of other people would just be bitter about it. I’ve had a couple of near misses (not with G) and I’m still a little bitter about them, and their upside wasn’t anything close to $100M.
I guess coping with the arbitrariness of wealth is just a fact of life in Silicon Valley.
Comment by gerster — March 1, 2006 @ 11:53 amRemember that fear, anger, greed lead to the dark side.
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope you are at peace with yourself. Not many have that luxury.
Comment by Yoda — March 1, 2006 @ 7:30 pmKeep in mind, there are more than a few people at your current company that had near misses *there*. And some even had big hits and then lost it all, which in my opinion is far, far worse.
-jake
Comment by Jake — March 1, 2006 @ 8:18 pmMaybe I should write my [brief] “rich in a parallel universe” story too… I bet we all have at least one of those.
Comment by Jeremy Zawodny — March 1, 2006 @ 9:14 pmEven though the me in the parallel did sell all my shares of a Yahoo acquisition in December of 1999, while the real me didn’t, that me didn’t ever meet the real me’s wife and have a beautiful child with her. That me also ultimately blew all his new found wealth on crap he didn’t need, he lost his focus at work, shunned his family and friends because he thought he was better than they were, and ultimately ended up far worse than the real me. The real me was able to learn from that bitter experience the same way you learned to see the positives from your experience.
It’s therapeutic to go over the alternate scenarios in your head. Even though the real you still has to go to work everyday, it might as well be at one of the greatest companies on the planet.
(The real me thinks it’s still possible he’s going to end up better than the alternate me of 1999.)
Comment by maybe another yahoo — March 2, 2006 @ 12:37 pmnice one amr. i guess a lot of us are in the same boat.
maybe in a parallel universe yahoo’ would have bought both ebay’ and google’, and our stock price would be $300 (without splits) instead of $30 and all of us would be filthy rich
- lalit
Comment by lalit — March 2, 2006 @ 5:11 pmlol, very true lalit. That yahoo’ company has a valuation of 400B and a price target of 1000
– amr
Comment by amr — March 2, 2006 @ 6:20 pmAmr,
sorry we bought you and didn’t let you go to Google, or is it glad we bought you so you didn’t die with @home. Really, very glad you are with us. The story hasn’t end yet. Yahoo has everything it needs to win. time will tell. Lastly, your daughter’s video was very cute.
Comment by Phu Hoang — March 2, 2006 @ 11:07 pmThis is perhaps the best blog posting I have ever read. Amr is a very cool dude! I saw Amr’ at Il Fornaio a few weeks back and he is a total a–hole…….divorced his lovely wife, his kids won’t talk to him and his botox has made it so that he can’t even smile anymore. Rumor has it that he went down to South America last week on vacation and was kidnapped…….nobody cares that much for him & they won’t even come up with the ransom. Poor sucker.
Comment by Rob Solomon — March 3, 2006 @ 2:29 pmRobs,
Thanks for the nice complements, it makes me feel much better to know that Amr’ is an a-hole
For those who do not know, Rob was one of the 6 culprits on the Yahoo side that architected the VivaSmart acquisition, though he claims he was there just as an observer (the other 5 are Scarls, Phu, Qi, Acton and Ellen).
Rob is currently CEO for SideStep trying to catch up with Rob’
SideStep is a cool Travel Comparison Shopping company, you should give it a try:
http://www.sidestep.com/air/
but dont forget to try Yahoo’s Travel Search Engine too
http://farechase.yahoo.com/
– amr
Comment by amr — March 3, 2006 @ 3:23 pmSigh.
Will all due respect, can you all please stop bellyaching about how rich you could have been and fix yahoo’s contact manager/address book/email system (I’ve been waiting like 6 months to try the new one out,
despite several teaser emails telling me “it’s almost
your turn!”).
The delay is inexplicable since I actually am a paying customer (thru yahoo hosting, which btw, has really come a long way in the last two years — nice work, if any bellyachers here are in that group).
I don’t want to switch my business to gmail, but you are making it very, very hard not to.
Also, it would be nice if I didn’t have to log into
yahoo once per day.
Anyone wondering why I post something like this here
instead of yahoo customer support has not had the
pleasure of dealing with yahoo customer support!
this self pity is mind-blowing! Make a difference.
:)
Comment by Wayne W — March 5, 2006 @ 9:39 amwayne w
Amr -
Wow, one of the most interesting posts I’ve ever seen. This type seems to be
more common than the “rich filthy S.O.B.’” versions though I’ve never heard
a “missed $100,000,000″ story before.
But you VERY correctly note that a good family and comfortable life is worth more GOOGs than you can shake a stick at. And as Jeremy noted Yahoo [and I’d say Web 2.0] is like
Comment by Joseph Hunkins — March 5, 2006 @ 10:47 amLas Vegas and … you are still at the table with a pile of chips.
Amr, this is a really funny/interesting post, and I absolutely echo Gerster’s comments that it is awesome you have such a good outlook on that near miss.
I know I (as well as most everyone in the valley has done this type of math), and after a lot of needless ‘what if’s’ I came to the exact same conclusion. Family, Friends, and Happiness are much more important then a ton of money. I know a lot of people that did make the same choice as Amr’, and they are miserable.
Anyway, I am happy you made the choice you did as you make work a much more interesting place!
Greg
Comment by Greg — March 5, 2006 @ 11:20 amAmr’ sucks at Halo, so clearly the right path was chosen
Comment by chad — March 6, 2006 @ 9:46 amAmr,
Thanks for sharing. And that flickr photo is so… cute (the baby that is, not the big guy
.)
Nam
Comment by Nam — July 14, 2006 @ 3:00 pm