Good Technology Wasn't So Good for Employees

Here is a fascinating story by Katie Benner about a fallen unicorn with the puzzlingly generic name "Good Technology." Good was formed in 2009 by the combination of a startup and a division of Motorola. It "raised about $300 million in equity and debt,"1450899426468 hitting a peak valuation of more than $1 billion in early 2014. It filed for an initial public offering in May 2014, but then it delayed and ultimately cancelled the IPO. Its board turned down an $825 million acquisition offer in March 2015, "confident that Good would be valued at around $1 billion when it went public." But then it ran into financial trouble and was ultimately sold for $425 million in September.

That $425 million was more or less enough to make whole Good's venture capital investors, who owned preferred stock,1450900518537 but was a shock to employees, who had received common stock and stock options as part of their compensation, and who "discovered their Good stock was valued at 44 cents a share, down from $4.32 a year earlier." Some of these employees had bought stock in the open market, in addition to the shares they'd received in compensation; others had paid cash taxes to exercise their options in amounts that exceeded what the shares ended up being worth. "Employees essentially ended up paying to work for the company," says one of them.