On what just happened with OnLive

This is a guest post, written by investor Brad Feld.

Disclaimer: I’m not an investor in OnLive and I know nothing about the specifics of what happened. I’m just speculating, but it’s informed speculation based on my experience.

I read a few articles over the weekend about OnLive potentially going out of business, potentially screwing its employees, and a few other things. The first articles were weirdly hostile with a focus on how OnLive just laid all their employees off in preparation for a sale in order to enrich the founders/investors at the expense of the employees. By the end of the weekend the reporting was more thorough and balanced.

Companies fail – all the time. It’s part of entrepreneurship. It’s painful and sucks when you are part of a company that fails (I know from experience – I’ve been there many times) – whether you are a founder, employee, or investor. But failure is part of it and at the moment of acceptance of failure, a good founder and board look for the most graceful path forward, however messy and yucky that might be.

One of those approaches is something called assignment for the benefit of creditors (ABC). If you were around during the collapse of the Internet bubble, you’ll remember this. It’s a lot easier and quicker than a formal bankruptcy (via a Chapter 11 filing) and allows the assets of a company to quickly be sold to a new owner. In some cases this is just for cash to pay off creditors; in other cases it’s a way to sell the company to a new owner and keep the business operating.

OnLive looks to me like the second case. The news is coming out that it has a new owner, that many of the employees have already been offered jobs post ABC, and that the service will continue to operate and customers won’t be negatively impacted.

The key thing to understand in an ABC is that 100% of the equity is wiped out and deemed worthless. The founders equity, the investors equity, and the employees equity. When a company goes into ABC, it’s almost always because the value of the liabilities far outweighs the perceived value of the assets. No buyer was found that was willing to take on the liabilities while giving the equity holders any economic value. So – an ABC effectively “cleans this up” for the new owner – compartmentalizing the liabilities in the ABC process and using the proceeds from whatever asset sales come out of ABC to pay off some portion of the liabilities.

Occasionally investors will get something in an ABC because they are creditors. If the last round (or rounds) have been in convertible debt, or just straight debt, the investors (whoever holds the debt) will be creditors. They can often be pretty high up in the creditor stack and sometimes recover some or all of their debt. But their equity will almost always be worthless.

In a situation where the company is immediately purchased out of ABC (which is what it looks like happened in OnLive’s case) many of the employees will be rehired by the new owner. While their stock options will be worthless (as is all equity) they are often immediately offered new stock option packages. Usually the vesting clock resets completely; sometimes a new owner will be extra generous and offer a shorter vesting term.

In OnLive’s case, it feels like the company simply ran out of options and couldn’t find a new investor or a buyer who would take on the company outside of ABC. Rather than shut down, they found a buyer / investor (which could be a subset of the existing investors) who would recapitalize the company and keep it going as long as he didn’t inherit the liabilities. Hence, the ABC process.

Rather than screwing the employees to enrich management, this feels to me like a pretty employee friendly approach. Hopefully the stories this week will clear this up, rather than end on “it looks like the investors and the founders screwed the employees.”

Don’t ever forget that failure is part of the process.

This story initially appeared on Brad Feld’s own blog, Feld Thoughts.

Brad Feld is a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colo. He invests in software and Internet companies around the US, runs marathons, and reads a lot.