Did Dave tell you that or are you just making an assumption? If Don thought Dave could realistically produce such a thing Don wouldn’t be tempted to break his promise to gain billions when he could keep it and make trillions. If Don doesn’t know that then he does know Dave is an oddball and he could be working on perfecting the electric fork.
You also seem to say that Don and Christopher didn’t contribute significantly to this business but that’s not what Dave thinks. He didn’t give them a big chunk of his company for nothing, he thought he needed them and that they were valuable enough create this situation in the first place.
Yes that is wrong of him. You are talking about HUGE amounts of money. This scenario might be more morally and ethically ambiguous if the amounts were smaller.
I wrote that Dave is the driving force behind the INNOVATIONS. He’s the tech genius. But DCD surely needs marketing and operationons guys too, and those are the kinds of roles I imagine Don & Christopher fill(ed). Dave is more important in that he could haved have found other people to fill their roles more easily than the revese, but they were still important.
He could pay other people to do those jobs, he gave Don and Christopher a share of the business because they were worth more to him than just anyone doing that work.
Don & Christopher got those jobs because they were the founders with Dave, owened the business in equal measure with him. They are obviously owed an equal lamount of the profits. But Don is not going to be as valuable to RI, which wants the products, the patents, and the genius behind them.
What’s the difference between having $200 million in the bank, and $1 billion? You can’t buy the…okay, I can’t think of any pro sports teams. The Yankees! You can’t buy the Yankees either way.
I have already said that I would probably break the promise in Don’s case (though I think it’s unethical to do so), and I will further grant that, if Dave truly loves Don, he should agree to the sale. By why must Dave consent to violate his own principles and wishes so that Don can go from being a multi-millionaire to being a billionaire?
I don’t think she’s a bitch for wanting to sell; she’s not breaking any promises. She might be a bitch for starting something that is likely to bust up a 20-year friendship, but it wasn’t HER friendship. What if she’s felt for years that they should sell, but, knowing that it would blow up Christopher’s friendship with Dave, said to herself, “I can’t do this to my husband.” After he got black-lives-don’t-mattered to death, she may have no longer felt any such constraints.
It only changes the dynamic. While Christopher was alive, the company was three guys who had known one another since they were teenagers and hae q mu5uql dommitment. But Heather was not part of that and was not bound by Christopher’s promise. Don and Christopher may never have investigated the possibilities of selling the business in any serious way, while she did.
That doesn’t matter. Dave has an obligation to operate the business for the benefit of his shareholders. If he’s deliberately minimizing profits to the detriment of Don and Heather then he is being unethical himself, especially to Heather who wasn’t a party to the agreement, and perhaps Dave has broken the pact he made with Don and Chris. I don’t know the details, go ask Dave about this, let him explain his position in rational terms. We don’t know what Don is going to do, but we do know what Dave has been doing.
you know this reminds me of the beastie boys when the head member died he put in his will that they could do what ever they want with the music rights except put them in commercials …
Anyway, it wasn’t the head guy who died in this scenario.
dave has never been majrority shareholder; there isn’t one. Don and Christopher had equal stakes to his, and until a year ago were both executives with the company. Surely they realized how the company was being run – that the profits were being funneled by into research rather than into their pockets. They could have cajoled, persuaded, or even froced him to change that. If Don and Christopher then (Don and Heather now) can vote to sell the company they can also vote to change the compensation plan, to say, Hey, if we’re makig $10 million a year in profits, each of us should get a million and a half in take home pay."
)As I think on it, that $10 million a year in profits is pretty low to be funding serious researc. Anybody who wants to say DCD is making much more than that should lfeel free. My above point stands.)
Yes he is, because it was a promise made with full knowledge and not under duress.
And they really should have set it up so that only the three of them could own shares, with shares reverting to the common pool on death, rather than inherited…
Legal opinion is mixed, but his bandmates choose to honour his wishes, so it’s moot
MCA wasn’t the “head” of the Beasties, they (well, the main 3, not the touring band) were more-or-less equal partners, with all 3 credited for all their songs, AFAIK.
I think Dave, Don, and Heather should sell out to RI for the $3B.
And the day before the contract is signed, Don and Heather should, in their capacity as co-owners of DCD, sell all of Dave’s patents to him, free and clear, for the sum of $1.00.
The day after RI’s check clears, Dave should write bonus checks to all of DCD’s employees (much the same way that the owners of Kingston Technology did back in, I want to say 1994?). Then he should tender his resignation from DCD (a wholly-owned subsidiary of RI), and head out the door with HIS patents, buy a helicopter, and join Don, Mrs. Don, Heather, and all their friends on the cruise liner Oakminster posited on the preceding page of this thread.
Forgot to add: As soon a this plan has been concocted, Dave should officially release Don from his promise, putting Don in the clear, ethically speaking.
(Well, except for the deception the three of them are engaging in wrt RI, of course, but I’m not counting that, because fuck those guys.)
What makes y’all so sure he would bother helping others? If he was unethical enough to sell out his friend, why wouldn’t he be unethical enough to sell out total strangers?
I normally don’t put a price on friendship…but here we are.
Also, isn’t this basically a major theme of HBO’s Silicon Valley?
Also, $250k a year is “middle class”?
Obviously this is difficult to answer in the hypothetical. It’s easy to say “fuck Dave” or “my word is my bond” when you don’t have an actual relationship with Dave and someone isn’t handing you a billion dollar check.
The fact of the matter is that the values and goals they may have had as young college students probably changed over the years. Friendship is one thing, but this is also a business. Dave and his partners have an opportunity for a life-changing exit from their company and I think it’s selfish of Dave to not take advantage of that. Particularly his decision is based off of some vague morality against “big corporations”.
Besides, I’m sure Dave’s moralizing has become tedious at this point.
Except that Remyhr International’s lawyers aren’t complete idiots. They would make the purchase of DCD contingent on ownership of the patents and other IP and possibly retention agreements for Dave and other key personal. Or did you think Remyhr would just hand over a billion dollars and stand by while DCD fucks them?
There are all sorts of legal and practical reasons why this acquisition might not be able to happen without Dave. However, I believe the point of the OP was the ethical implications.
You know, the day a friend asks me to make a promise that involves screwing over my dependents upon my death, they stop being my friend. The way that’s normally handled is that the survivors buy out the stake of the deceased partner, not just take it, as described earlier.
Fuck Dave then, he’s being an idealistic nimrod who’s basically held his friends back for decades, and now wants to hold back his friend’s family and his other friend and his family on account of his own ideological wants.
A way that Don and Heather could approach the non-written contract with Dave is to point out that the original contract was between Dave, Don and Chris. With Chris’ death, the contract is no longer in force, so a new one needs to be negotiated with Heather and Don.
And kaylasdad99, I’m sure that would land all three of them in litigation for the remainder of their natural lives. Presumably, based on the descriptions, DCD is basically a research outfit that probably makes most of their money licensing inventions out to manufacturers. RI would probably be wanting to buy them for their accumulated intellectual property and agreeing to sell, and then subsequently enabling Dave to abscond with the patents would be considered negotiating in bad faith and/or breach of contract. The bonus thing might be possible though; if they’re concerned more about the patents and licensing, they’re not liable to quibble about the cash reserves of the company itself.
So they should engage in manifestly unethical behavior to defraud RI of billions of dollars, for which they will undoubtedly be sued and possibly prosecuted?
RI’s offer is for company’s name, goodwilll facilities, materiials, products, and patents. . What you’re suggesting is like selling a house and then, on the day of closing, deliberately setting fire to it. It’s way past unethical; it’s criminal. The only way I can see justifying it would be if Remyhr International were actually the avowedly and openly supervillainous Rhymer Enterprises–but in that case, betraying them would also be suicidal for everyone but Heather. (Of course, so would turning down the offer).
And the patens don’t necessarily go back to 1994. DCD is an ongoing concern that is continuing to produce new tech. If Dave were not continuing to produce, RI wouldn’t want to hire him.
I wouldn’t do, I’ve never seen it.
Already addressed. I wrote the thread title before the OP, and really should have changed it to “middle-class” to “moderately wealthy.” The point, though, is that Don is inno way impoverished and does not need RI’s money. He just wants it.
Not necessarily. There’s nothing to indicate that Dave is requesting that anyone else live on a plumber’s salary. And he may not be doing so for moral reasons; he must just not have expensive tastes. And bear in mind that in recruiting Dave and Christopher to invest, he promised to make them rich, which he delivered – just no SUPER rich.
How has Dave held his friends back? He’s gotten them extremely well-paying jobs that have made them both moderately wealthy. And while I’m sure they made their contributions, HE, not that, is the key man at DCD. RI wants to buy the firm to procure his his inventions and his services, not theirs.
Let’s say Don persuades Dave to agree to the sale of RI’s patens and so forth, because despite his distaste for RI, Dave loves his buddy more. But he’s not willing to work for them. He’s gonna take his buyout, go live on a farm in Tennessee for a year while the non-compete clause in his contract runs out, and then start anohter little shop. RI, told this, says, “Okay, but DCD is no longer worth three billion; the offer is now for one point five billion.” Is Dave holding his friends back by refusing to work for RI?
There is no contract. It’s an agreement. I doubt any such contract would be enforceable, because there’s no exchange of consideration and no expiration date. It was all predicated on honor and friendship.
And Heather, while the catalyst for all this, has not done anything wrong. She made no promise to the other two and Christopher’s promise is not binding upon her. She’s in the clear ethically no matter what happens.