Employees at Pinterest, which had its initial public offering last week, are each reported to have an average of $700,000 in company stock. Pinterest, an image-sharing site, has 1800 employees. After its IPO it closed at $24.40, up 28 percent from its $19 pricing, taking these staff to within a whisker of being millionaires. The average equity held by Pinterest employees is less than was the case with Snap employees when it went public in 2017.
Zoom, a cloud-based videoconferencing company with 1700 staff, closed its first day of trading at $62, exceeding its initial $36 price by 72 percent. Many more staff millionaires. During the spurt of IPOs when Facebook went public in 2012, about 12,000 people became millionaires thanks to their new stock wealth.
This time around, just six IPOs: Uber, Lyft, Palantir, Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest and Postmates, would producing a potential $230 billion market windfall and create about 6,000 millionaires. This will unleash billions of liquid dollars into the market and make 2019 a year of incredible wealth creation. An early employee might use the $20 million he makes to buy a new home and price you out of a neighborhood. Or a startup co-founder might set up a charitable foundation that makes a difference in your life.
The decisions that the rich make in 2019 will shape the real estate, philanthropy and startup worlds for years to come. The people making money from IPO’s typically fall into three categories: Venture capitalists, who can keep their shares and ride through the public markets. Founders, who try not to sell shares too early in case it be read as a vote of no confidence in their company. And employees, who are often subject to six-month lockups that keep them from selling their shares. And none of those groups are required to sell any stock.
The new wealth from tech pours into housing, which makes housing values soar, which creates trillions of dollars in additional new wealth through the knock-on effect. Upgrading their home is the first thing that Silicon Valley’s people with money do, and those already with homes buy second homes in places like Tahoe.
What do people who still have money after purchasing the new house do? Big-dollar philanthropy. They generally make their charitable gifts in the year when they book a big gain in income, to avoid paying a big tax on that gain. That’s why people expect that next year will be a big year in the world of giving. Lastly, there’s the money that wealth advisers expect to go back into the market. Perhaps start a private foundation if they’re a billionaire or invest where the money was made — in startups. This will fund the next generation of entrepreneurs and IPOs. So if you’re a startup looking for more investors you’re a winner next year. If you’re a middle-class renter looking to buy a home, you’re likely out of luck.
It is unfortunate that in this time of greatly increasing disparity between the one percent and the rest of the population, the number of millionaires is likely to be in the single-digit thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Think what an incredible difference it would make to the economy if that $230,000,000,000 of new wealth were more evenly disbursed.
Jeff Bezos went to the bank yesterday to talk about a loan,Not for Bezos…for the bank !