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  • No.31⚡️️Bumble’s stinging IPO, Cheres in NYC & Russia updates

No.31⚡️️Bumble’s stinging IPO, Cheres in NYC & Russia updates

December 24, 2022

Hi bb. Bumble’s earliest employees weren’t given any equity and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was… not actually in control of the company until 2020? 🐝

In other news… Cheres IRL events 🥂, Russia’s economy is down bad 📉, Ukraine's Twitter memes 🤡, oil and gas leaving Russia & more… + Pop culture moments 🍿

Gm bb,

Keeping up with the Chereverse probably feels like a national sport by now. We feel you. It's exactly like when you tell us where you're at now in your investing journey. It's ever evolving, and yes we're so proud. 💚 There's A LOT on the calendar so if you're not following us on Twitter, IG nor made it to our Discord yet, here's a recap:

So join us for drinks and fintech/crypto/etc, stay for the friends and fun convos.

  • 3/3, 7pm: Join us for IRL food & dranks 🥂 in Williamsburg…Web 3 on 3/3 bb

  • 3/7, 8pm: Our very own Kat is speaking @ Women of Web3 alongside Clutch Wallet, Surge Women, NFT artists, and famous TikTok stars for IWD 💫

  • Next week: Vote on where to cowork w/us! We’ll supply the caffeine ☕

P.S. Stay tuned as we continuously share our calendars with you. A LOT more coming.

Early employees stung by Bumble's IPO 🐝😔

It was impossible to miss the buzz around Bumble’s successful IPO and its (former) billionaire CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd. But behind the honey-sweet celebration, the dating app’s earliest employees felt stung.

Like many others in the startup world, early Bumble employees worked looooong nights, dealt with shaky HR, and sat through meetings in a closet (ya, after my 3 creators alternated sleeping on the living room floor, I believe it), thinking they’d be rewarded with a nice stack of cash. Unfortunately, these folks found themselves empty handed.

During a 2018 “Beetreat” to the idyllic Half Moon Bay, Whitney dropped a bombshell. Her earliest employees, hungover from the previous night’s antics, were receiving no equity 🏚️. “My hands are tied,” she said. Years before, she had partnered with Andrey Andreev, a Russian tech veteran, and only kept 20% of the company stake. Andrey’s parent company controlled the votes and equity, and Whitney was a figurehead who only controlled marketing and “work culture.”

Well, at least options weren’t in the cards for the worker bees. Whitney’s closest friends/executives, aka the OGs, were granted shadow equity in secret. Shadow equity (aka phantom equity 👻) is cash given based on the company’s performance, which means 👑King and Queen Bees 👑Andrey and Whitney wouldn’t get their shares diluted. Better than nothing, I guess? 🤷

When Whitney took over the parent company in mid-2020, just 9 months before the IPO, she awarded stock options and RSUs to employees. But that was years too late for the early employees who built the thriving hive.

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Quick News Bites

Russia’s economy is down bad 🇷🇺📉

The west is hitting Russia where it hurts — the wallet. In one of the biggest economic sanctions issued by the western world, SWIFT, the US/CA/EU interbank supercollab 🤝cut off key Russian banks, including its central bank. This prevents Russia from accessing a lot of its cash reserves, which are stored in foreign currencies 💱 and gold.

This was bad news for Russia. The ruble tanked on Monday morning, falling 30% since the previous week’s close. And the west hasn’t even pulled out the big guns — the SWIFT sanction was purposefully partial, leaving room for further penalties down the line.

Call of Booty 🍑: Modern Warfare (aka catfishing Russian soldiers)

Russia is known for its elite cyber team — the country is responsible for more than halfof the world’s state-sponsored hacks. But Ukraine has a few tricks (?) up its sleeves.

  • Memes 🐕. The official Ukraine Twitter account posted a political cartoon of Hitler stroking Putin’s face, cheekily drawing parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Germany’s invasion of Poland 🇵🇱.

  • Catfishing 🐱. Russian soldiers have been flirting with Ukrainian women on Tinder, inadvertently revealing their plans to attack Kharkiv. Since then, Russian troops have been ordered to turn off their phones, but maybe Ukraine can still use fake profiles for intel.

  • Volunteer hackers 🧑‍💻. Ukraine is asking underground hackers to join the fight. Offensively, they’ll defend power plants, water systems, and other important infrastructure from cyber attacks. Defensively, they’ll do some espionage and maybe take down some of Russia’s interwebs.

Oil & Gas ends friendship with Russia 🛢️

Russia’s economy relies heavily on oil and gas; it’s the largest gas exporterand the 3rd largest oil producer in the world. As such, BP, Shell, and Equinor (Norway) ❌ cut ties ❌ with Russian companies as tensions continue to rise. Oil companies are (ironically) big on ESG (Environmental 🌱, Social 🧑‍🤝‍🧑, and Corporate Governance standards 👔). Leaving Russia is probably another tick ✅ in the “social” box for those oil companies, because refusing to work with a country that’s waging war is probably a good thing for society.The moves of BP and the like have put other oil companies, like ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies, under the hot seat 📛. So far, the major companies that haven’t pulled out of Russia have declined to comment. Looking at the stats, it’s not hard to understand why. Russia delivered 16% of Total’s oil and gas production last year, which makes it hard for them to pull out. In comparison, Shell only had 5% of its production in Russia.

What's Poppin' 🍿