From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sat Feb 24 2001 - 00:54:38 MST
Brian Phillips wrote:
>
> Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:48:27 -0500
> From: Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com>
> Subject: Re: socially responsible investing
>
> Of course remember: if you really intend on /helping/ the companies in
> question, you have to invest during the IPO or before. Otherwise your
> cash is just going to some other random person/org, not the company
> itself.>>
>
> Is this becuase you would just be purchasing stock owned by some random
> person/org or is my fiscal ignorance even greater than I suspected?
Correct. There actually are pretty limited ways to buy stock from the
company itself (so it gets your money and can use it). A company generally
gets its primary infusions of cash:
a) when it first starts up some angels or other investors give it a little
bit of cash in exchange for large chunks of the company (since it ain't
worth much yet, their money buys a lot of it)
b) as time goes on and the company's value increases, and it needs more
capital to fund itself, it takes in investment usually from VCs
c) if things go really well it grows big enough to have an IPO. It sells
off a chunk of itself to the public market (you can buy IPO shares through
your broker usually).
After that point you generally can't invest in the company directly, unless
they do what's called a secondary offering, which just means they print up
and dump some more shares into the public market. But you have to be careful
since executives, VCs, and other people that own shares may sell off theirs
too at that point- so your money might just go into their pockets. Actually
this can happen during the IPO itself, so read that prospectus...
I would say Zyvex is at least 2 years away from an IPO, and probably more
than that.
-- Brian Atkins Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/
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