Over on the iConsumer Facebook page last week, we got a comment from Rory C., who said:
“Stop advertising this kind of thing to people who don’t understand anything about how stock or equity of a company works. Someone signs up and gets 100 shares, which is essentially worthless, and with each new sign up or potential investor their shares are diluted, likely almost completely by the time there’s anything worth value.”
It’s a great comment, because it’s exactly why we think we SHOULD do this. One of our most important goals is to give people who’ve never had a chance to invest, and possibly don’t understand the Wall Street world, the opportunity to learn. For NO CASH out of their pocket. They earn the stock. We’re not currently asking people to invest, and when we did, we’ve made it possible to invest the price of two fancy cocktails.
To the people who earn their shares, for joining, shopping, and referring, I say our stock will never be worth less than you paid. Then I say thanks for supporting a new kind of company. And then I grin a bit. For those who invested cash, first I say thanks, and then I say we’re working very hard to make the stock worth more than you paid. Of course I can’t promise that it’ll be worth more. So you must be willing to risk the price of those two drinks (or whatever you invested). But I can promise that you’ll be an insider witnessing the creation of a new kind of company, a company built by its customers, built by the 99%. A company where every customer is a shareholder, and every shareholder is a customer.
On the bit about dilution, we’ve already addressed that, because it’s a legitimate concern. Please visit our Shareholder FAQs and scroll to the accretive / dilutive section for a long answer. Short answer – if each new shareholder adds value greater than the shares they earn, then each new shareholder is accretive (fancy word for adding value) rather than dilutive. So long as each new member helps us be a bigger company, we expect that they’ll be accretive.
As to whether the stock is worthless … we can agree to disagree. The last time somebody paid cash for our stock, they paid $.09 a share. Obviously, they didn’t think it was worthless. One of the lessons we’re hoping to teach newbie shareholders with iConsumer is that different people have varying ideas as to the worth of something. Why is Tesla worth more than Ford? Tesla make’s a lot less money than does Ford. Hmmm.
Once we’re quoted on a market, our members have an easy way to see what people are paying for our stock. They can decide for themselves if we’re over or under priced. And they can do that knowing that the stock they earned, the stock they didn’t pay cash for, gives them real skin in the Wall Street game.