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Man Becomes 'Accidental Millionaire' After Jet.com's Sale To Walmart (fortune.com)
The acquisition of Jet.com by Walmart for $3 billion in cash appears to have made the founder of IdeaDash an "accidental millionaire." Fortune reports: "Martin, who is the founder of a startup called IdeaDash, won Jet.com's nationwide marketing competition -- Jet Insider -- in early 2015. The contest offered a reward of 100,000 shares of Jet stock to the contestant who got the most people to sign up for 6-month free trial 'insider' memberships to the membership shopping site, a sort of online Costco or Sam's Club. According to his company's website, Martin took first place out of the 350,000 people who participated, getting over 8,000 people to sign up. Martin spent $18,000 on online ads, Bloomberg reports, and now has a stake in Jet that is reportedly worth millions. Although Martin told Bloomberg that he is not sure exactly what his stake is worth, Fusion reported in February 2015 that his piece could be valued between $10 million and $20 million."
Man with a plan finally sees the fruits of his efforts after several years
Sure sounds to me like he had a plan, having spent almost $20K of his own money to win the contest.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Well the first thing you know... you do.
It's 2016, yet...
[...] Jet.comâ(TM)s [...] Samâ(TM)s Club. [...] companyâ(TM)s website[...]
...still happens.
- shame... shame... shame... bling bling bling
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Name is Martin... contest involved. Any relation to Trevor Martin from CSGO Lotto gambling scandal?
Yeah, it's a bit like playing the lottery. But it's one of those "I did this dumb thing and got rich anyhow" type stories I love.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sort of remind me of this guy
well at least they have free e-mail accounts!
Will walmart use some fine print to get out of paying this out?
The title of this article really confused me for a bit, because I assumed it was talking about Wallmart spending $3 billion on a URL. I mean, companies can spend big bucks on good URLs, but $3 billion?! I assumed it was a typo - that it should be million, especially after the "accidental millionaire" part - until I realised that Jet.com is a business lol
I wish I could accidentally spend $18,000
They don't get rich by sharing their returns with non-investors.
He likely has either been diluted or owns a class of shares which will be diluted.
They didn't give out those shares because they actually wanted to make someone rich, but as a promotional effort. Once the promotion was accomplished they immediately had plenty of reason to begin cutting the guy out of the deal.
It's weird that the original (fusion) article switches between saying they are options and they are shares.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It doesn't cost Walmart anything. They don't care who owns the stock.
I can find no record of Jet going public. If W-M buys it without it going public, won't this guy's options be useless?
He owns the same thing Walmart owns, though a smaller amount. Walmart thinks their portion is worth over $3 billion, so no the shares probably aren't worthless.
If the company is a) making money and b) not re-investing all of the profit go growth, they'll pay out the extra profit to shareholders as dividends. He'll get his portion of the dividends (profit).
If the company is growing quickly, and therefore reinvesting all profit, his holding increases in value as the company gets bigger, because eventually when it stops growing fast it'll be a bigger company paying bigger dividends.
If someone else wants those future dividends, they can get them by buying the stock from him today, in a private sale. Just because the stock isn't publicly traded doesn't mean it can't be privately traded.
The benefits of being publicly traded would just be that he wouldn't need to take the time to find a buyer, and he could more easily see how much the stock is selling for on any given day.