The company ran out of money, went bankrupt essentially, and thus common stockholders got wiped out. Silicon Valley doesn't tend to punish people for failing at business -- it's not clear from anything I've seen that the company did anything immoral. It would be nice to retain enough cash to pay out some severance to employees when you shut down, but other creditors have rights too, and you can get sued if you do more than the minimum. Maybe putting it into employment contracts is worthwhile.
I agree it is a shame her health insurance is tied to the employer -- that's a major problem with the US health care system, and why I have personal insurance (rather than taking insurance from an employer). Fortunately, her husband should have a new job if he wants one before the end of the week.
Because if he just shut down the company instead, his employees would totally have it made. There's no happy way to do a fire sale, which is what this looks like.
Well somebody got a lot of money, we will find out later who, but definitely not the one who needed it the most. And please USA, get your health care fixed. It is so sad to read these stories all the time. You are the richest country on earth.
From the sounds of it, 'a lot of money' is probably both an overstatement and also a value significantly less than 'money they invested into the company'.
If the CEO was going to get nothing which I strongly doubt, he should have just quit. Nobody would taint their reputation for zero return, Steve Perlman definitely would have made something out of this - it might not be a lot of money but I can almost bet that it is a hell of a lot more money than those who were fired and shafted received.
I think someone needs to orchestrate some kind of small-scale campaign to smear Steve Perlman from ever running any kind of company in the future.
The company build up value (patents etc.) and the employees get zero of that. Maybe the VC's are the problem, when they dictate terms when they have a higher preference than the employees (what is unjust to begin with), but also a CEO who allowed that. In this case he got nothing either, but has still some responsibility.
Gaikai was bought for 380m, i just don't get how OnLive can be worth less than the 50m investment.
You may get more money, but your reputation is fucked.
Morally i find this way more infuriating than Yahoo suing Facebook.