When I served as President of Linspire, Michael Robertson almost never got involved in hiring or firing decisions. The one exception was with Robertson's special friend Tina Stahlke-Donaldson, whom he employeed to run his non-profit R.E.E.F. organization and forced upon Linspire. I wanted to let Tina go (see my email in the email thread below), and then received one of the longest emails I ever received from Robertson, where it called into question my decision. This email was then followed up by a very long, heated meeting, where Robertson went to the mat for Tina, absolutely refusing to let me fire her. I'd never seen Robertson go to the mat like that for anyone, let alone this limited-experienced "temp."
Tina was also the only employee to have the company buy back some of her exercised employee stock options, something the CFO reluctently did under force by Robertson. The other 100 shareholders can't even get an answer from Robertson as to what happend to their stock, but Tina gets hers bought back at 20X?
The below email thread is telling. Let's just say, Robertson's "senior" perception of Tina was very different from everyone else's. It's also interesting how he seems to be fine paying her a big salary at his non-profit R.E.E.F. but not needing her to work full-time there, but to user her more at Linspire. Would the IRS would find that legal? Should R.E.E.F. lose it's non-profit status?
In the email below (and later in my meeting with Robertson), he made a big deal out of the "Seagate deal." That deal ended up making Linspire, I believe, less than $100K, and it certainly wasn't all Tina's doing. It's interesting to see how Robertson went to such lengths to protect this one girl, and yet the team of long-time, dedicated, EXPERIENCED EXECUTIVES that had just brought in a deal for EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS, Robertson had no problem seeing let go, and the only fight he put up was AGAINST these employees, figthing to see them get only 2 weeks severance, when I, as CEO, wanted to treat them more fairly. Then to top it off, he falsley accuses them of crimes.
Why was Tina so special?More on all of this in a future blog.
Kevin
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From: Michael Robertson <michael@lindows.com>
Date: November 20, 2003 9:41:29 PM PST
To: Kevin Carmony <kevin@lindows.com>
Cc: larry@lindows.com
Subject: Re: Tina
Here are my thoughts.
I don't understand why this is a rush issue. Has she brought up compensation concerns before? Why are we talking about it for the first time now if she's been bringing it up for a few weeks? If we've talked about it, I haven't heard about it. Is this out of the blue or have we let a situation deteriorate where someone is unhappy? Something seems amiss here. My experience is when an employee throws down an ultimatum, then we've messed up some by not spotting and addressing situation earlier (or there's been a big change in their family situation). I think there's background here that I'm missing. I'd like to hear it. Larry?
I don't think we should confuse the situation here. REEF is irrelevant to this equation. The question is what value does Tina give to Lindows.com and what is her pay. That is the correct analysis. Whether she is making $4.00 or $400,000 at REEF shouldn't impact our Lindows.com analysis.
I agree that Larry's team is swamped. The reality is that we need MORE sales people not less. And we need senior people, not jr people. On the sales team we have Larry and Tina that I feel comfortable can meet with any customer. (I admit I haven't seen Clay in action - so I can't judge him.) The rest of the team, while passionate is very, very junior. Did my eyes deceive me or did I actually see Kendall in a sales meeting today? That was a surprise and kind of scary.
Tina represents Lindows.com well and can work with any prospective company we throw her way. She's solid at cold calls. She works well with people, understands the technology reasonably well and will attack any sales opportunity you point her at as well as generate her own like the college bookstore idea. Seagate seems to really like her and her write up on Seagate CSR's was spot on what we needed. I eaves dropped on a Seagate call today. She was clearly a leader in the meeting. She's been travelling a lot. She's been to more Intel road show meetings then anyone it seems.
As I remember it (and I have to admit I don't recall all the details), I think her original compensation was assuming several things which I'm NOT sure are true today.
- She would work half time on Lindows.com
My view is she's working much more than that. Just last weekend she told me she flew to Denver for a Sat nite stay over to get cheap plane fare and was then out of pocket all weekend because of Lindows.com business. Before that she was in New Jersey, Toronto, and some other places. (I'm not sure about all the places, but I know she's been doing lots of travel.)
I also admit I don't see the logic in your comment, "we need more hours out of our sales people not less". Here we have an employee saying "i need more compensation because I'm working more hours then we planned for" and we say no? Huh? I don't get it.
Lets try this experiment. Take Larry, Wayne and Clays pay to zero and then cut their share allotments in half of what they currently are and see how many hours we get out of them. If it's not as many as they currently work, lets fire 'em. That's the exact situation we have with Tina. We pay her a fraction of what the other folks get and then we're saying she doesn't work as much? Uh, yeah. We want more hours, she wants more pay. She's willing to take NO-CASH. That seems like a winning situation. Maybe I'm missing something.
To compare shares we give to Tina vs. the number of shares we give to full time SALARIED and benefitting employees is just plain wrong. That's a bullshit straw-man argument if I've ever seen one. And what's the idea about comparing her to QA? Why not compare her shares with what we give Larry?
We can do better analysis than one where we compare apples and oranges. Saying she doesn't work as much as full time people and that she gets more shares then other people is just an absolute mischaracterization of the situation. Is there a deeper issue here that I'm missing?
- We assumed she would be working on junior level sales calls and wouldn't know the technology a damn bit (at least I did)
Tina is clearly not working on junior level accounts. She's working on our #1 most important relationship - Seagate. And from my seat, they seem to really like her and have a great relationship with Seagate. Not sure how much of that she is responsible for because I'm not close enough to the relationship to know. However, whatever we're currently doing with seagate we need to keep doing AND do more of it, not less.
I don't understand the comment about using her stock for "several full time employees". That seems like an unrealistic comparison in my opinion. Are you suggesting we would get 2 people to work for no salary and just options? If so, lets hire a dozen of them! People that will work for all stock are great for us because they allow us to get to profitability sooner which will help immensely on funding, IPO valuation and lots more.
I guess my real question is, "Isn't she doing a good job?" If so, why aren't we trying to keep her happy? If not, lets make a change.
From my seat, it sure seems like it. I've seen lots of sales people and she's definitely on the better end of the sprectrum. Getting a senior sales person who is good at sales, people and knows technology will be expensive.
Lets talk in the AM about it.
-- MR
--
Michael Robertson
CEO, Lindows.com - World's Most Affordable Software
CEO, SIPphone Inc - Call worldwide for free!
michael@lindows.com
SIP: 1 (747) 474-0001 Call me. Visit SIPphone.com to find out how!
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Kevin Carmony wrote:
Michael,
Over the last few weeks, Tina has been hitting Larry up for more stock options. She said she's really feeling stretched between REEF and Lindows.com and that she needs to go back to REEF full time. She has said that the only way she can justify still helping Lindows.com is if we bump her stock to 45,000 shares (an increase of 30,000 over the original 15,000 we agreed to). To put that request in perspective, we give new, full-time engineers 1,000 to 3,000 stock options. Support, QA, etc. get 500 shares. So, at this stage of our business, 45,000 would be a tremendous amount of stock in lue of salary for someone part time, especially considering she's being compensated full time at REEF. (The 15,000 shares number was very fair and was based on the same deal we did with {employee name redacted} who forgoes his $70,000/year salary. In other words, Tina is paid a nice salary by REEF and still wants more stock to work part time than we give {employee name redacted} to work full time.) When she had earlier said she had free time from REEF, the 15,000 shares number was worth having her help out part time, but 45,000 shares is not in line with the value of the stock and I don't think it would be fair to change our agreement. We explained to her the 15,000 shares was more than fair and in line with the value and what we've done with others, but that didn't change her demand to alter the agreement and get more shares.
Regardless of the stock request, as you know, Larry's dept. is super busy right now. We need more hours out of our sales team members, not less. (I always see Larry, Clay, and Wayne here working late, and we need more people doing that.) I have talked this over with Larry and our recommendation would be to try and find a way to hire someone full time. I think we really now need full time people in that dept., working like crazy to follow up on all the leads.
Tina said she needs to know right away on our decision. Again, unless she changes her mind and will stay at our original agreement (which she has said she won't do), I recommend we let her return back to REEF full time and use that stock as an incentive for several future full-time employees.
I wanted to run this by you before we talk with her tomorrow. (Larry told her we'd have an answer for her by then.) If you disagree with our decision, please let us know.
Thanks,
Kevin
PS: If she does have free time from REEF, maybe SIPphone could use her in a capacity that isn't so demanding on her time?
--
Kevin Carmony
President & COO
Lindows.com
Work: 858-587-6700 Ext. 249
www.lindows.com
kevin@lindows.com
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