Tony James

Not only the going public, but once we were public.

Added $75 million a year at the time to our operating cost, which is not nothing, a lot more today.

we also were making people wildly rich.

So in those days, if you were working for one of these firms, if you got paid a million dollars this year, that was great.

But the next year, maybe you get paid a million or 750 or a million and a quarter, whatever it was.

But it was year to year.

We were coming in saying, for that, we're going to give you

Hundreds.

Hundreds of millions in many cases, or tens of millions.

And you're going to give up a little, you're going to give up a million of your annual income, but we're going to give you essentially 30 of a stock that's forever and grows over time in exchange.

So how do we not demotivate

not only how we not distract them by looking at the stock every day, but how do we not demotivate them from just, well, I'm worth $100 million today.

I'm just gonna put my feet up and come to work three days a week.

So all of that.

How did you do that?

We did that, first of all, by basically telling people they can't sell any stock for eight years.

Okay.

And then we had unusual vesting.

Whereas what was unvested, we could take away.

So most companies, if you have five-year vesting, if you let someone go, that triggers the acceleration of their vesting.