Orion Hindawi, the
Unlike previous rounds,
Orion Hindawi told CNBC that David is "taking about half of that, $50 million, and funding his charitable foundation, with that. The rest is going to early employees and investors." The foundation focuses on early childhood development and health, but the younger Hindawi declined to name it, saying that his father prefers to remain anonymous with his charitable giving.
Earlier this week, Hindawi told CNBC that going public is "the right thing for our company to do." He also said the company has more than $300 million in the bank and is cash-flow positive.
So if liquidity is the goal, and the company's finances are solid, why not go public now?
Hindawi said that he's looking for more predictable quarterly sales cycles. Right now the company's growth is driven mostly by new customers, and a huge deal at the end of the quarter could totally make or break the quarter, which could cause distracting swings in the stock price, he said.
"I've seen a lot of friends who run companies in the last year go public before they were ready," he said. "In some
He also contrasted
He called these companies "non-profits masquerading as tech companies" and slammed the "corrosive" start-up environment in San Francisco today.
"People are starting companies because they want to hang a shingle out there, engineers are focused on comp packages and stock packages instead of product," he said. "This was never permitted 30 years ago, even 15 years ago. There's a reckoning coming, and we kind of deserve it."
`Reasonable up round'
"I think there's a lot of precedent in the market for people being really disciplined about examining exit strategies and valuations of companies," Hindawi said. "Many companies have raised pretty substantial down rounds. We would consider this a reasonable up
However, the company's image was bruised by a recent report that called attention to Hindawi's aggressive management style and claimed the company was suffering executive attrition because of it.