Just to add a quick note to this. There’s almost nobody who’s going to work as hard as RC. There’s almost nobody who’s going to WANT to work that hard. People like him – he’s got the same drive as every other billionaire. Accumulate more and more while trying to force others to see his “vision” This is not shitting on the guy at all, but when I saw Furlong’s comp package when they hired him, I was like, “ai yi yi”. See, RC already built a startup. He went through the pain and misery of having to find funding and VC money. He did earn his billions pretty honestly relative to a lot of the scheissters out there. Nobody coming on as CEO is going to have that same perspective. Furlong was a company man, and again, that’s fine. The guy relocates across the world for a salary less than some of us here make, and they load him heavy with options on a stock that continued to trend down for the entirety of his stay there. If I was Furlong, I’d have felt grifted and been pissed. Check out the sales subreddit. This happens to people constantly in the startup and SAAS world. You’re sold some VC’s dream, and it doesn’t do shit after 5 years and the company folds.
The great “vision” or whatever RC has, you’re not going to find people willing to work for essentially free on your hopes and dreams. Outside of the board, nobody at that company can just faff about and afford to put their entire lives into that vision. If you want people to WORK, you compensate them properly. You hire people aligned with your strategy and you give them money. Stock is fine too, but sideways trading shares don’t pay mortgages or medical bills.
___
Exactly. GME is a legacy corporation they’re trying to pivot into tech. You can’t just pivot overnight and expect everybody to be onboard chasing the shiny new toy. There are definitely people out there that would buy into RCs vision and be experienced and smart enough to do it – but, are they willing to take the risk on his vision in shares vs taking that risk with a healthy cash compensation package? He whines about the C-suites all over the world being vastly overpaid, and he’s correct. But there’s a line between paying for the talent you need that aligns with you want to do, and just taking your ball and going home because you don’t want to bid what the market is asking for salary to do those things.
I don’t live in the multi-billion dollar corporate circles, but I work in them. If I truly thought Furlong was “the guy” I wanted, I’d have been paying him over a million a year plus tiered growth stock incentives and cash bonuses. It lets the guy live his life as he was probably accustomed to coming over as a former division president of AMZN, and still gives him tangible accelerators and bonuses for company growth. A million bucks a year for a quality CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation is a bargain.