• Kairos@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    The first sentence

    When you choose a software vendor, do you question how the company is financed? Should that be part of your evaluation?

    This article seems to be about the ethos of private equity. Legally they’re nearly identical.

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Private equity is commonly referring to “owned by a private equity fund” like Blackrock. It often involves extracting unhealthy amount of short term profit to make the numbers look better then sell the business so they can record a profit.

        • Caveman@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          … and Gabe N owns more than 50% so it’s not really the same as owned by Blackrock. It’s still a founder owned and operated company.

          • Kairos@lemmy.today
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            2 days ago

            Yes. And it could end up being sold to an entity such as blackrock and still be “privately owned”

            • Caveman@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Thats not true. Privately owned firms tend to be really bad because they don’t have a feduciary duty to long term value. They suck everything dry. Private equity is the reason why daycare costs so much yet the daycare workers make minimum wage.

              I think we’re probably not on the same wavelength. Privately owned doesn’t mean bad, a one person owner operated plumbing business is not bad.

              Publicly traded corporations are also really bad because the goal is increase in share price at the cost of long term success often. If you can show profit or revenue growth at the cost of losing customers by cutting costs that’s positive over there.

              Single person ownership of a company where the person cares about the company providing good value instead of making money is very different from maximising profit or resale value.

              So the dissonance I think mostly stems from the example of daycare that you made and your conclusion that private ownership is worse than publicly traded companies. If the daycare was publicly traded it would probably look the same since none of the owners really care about the staff. On the contrary an owner operated business often do care about staff and their development at the cost of their fiduciary duty.

              Private equity would gut a business for cash. Publicly traded would syphon away all customer value to increase the stock price. Owner operated business normally does neither since it’s their baby.

      • Kairos@lemmy.today
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        2 days ago

        Holy fucking shit Lemmy is becoming like Reddit. Can you guys learn to think please. This whole thing stated because I replied to this message

        As long as it remains privately owned, it should be OK. The day shares go public, god forbid, will be the beginning of the end.

        With something “that’s not true because private equity is bad and that’s still privately owned” and you all act like I said that all private ownership is identical to private equity.

        This is a very plausable thing that can happen to Steam. Doesn’t Gabe not have kids?

        Like what the fuck?? Am I going insane? Am I dreaming?

        • Almacca@aussie.zone
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          2 days ago

          Am I going insane?

          I’m not ruling it out ;⁠)

          Getting bought out by a private equity firm would be pretty dire for them as that never ends well, but that’s not what I was talking about and I thought that was pretty clear, but you responded as though it was. ‘Legally’ they may be the same, but they’re functionally very different, as the article I linked pointed out, but you chose to keep digging.

          Whatever. You’re right. Have a cookie.

          • Kairos@lemmy.today
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            2 days ago

            ‘Legally’ they may be the same, but they’re functionally very different

            Yes that’s what I said.