Scott Henderson was sitting in his room looking at a spreadsheet. He owned 196,000 shares of Genysis Mining which was 19.6% of the total. They had split 40/25/25/10 between Scott, Matt, Barry and Adrianna. Then, their initial stakes were diluted by the wall street investors' ownership of 51%. Based on the initial investment of $4M, the company was valued at $7.8 million. That meant his personal stake was worth a little over $1.5 million.
There were some other moves Melinda had made in the past few days. She had made a $300,000 investment in Genysis Energy in exchange for 100,000 shares. This diluted his ownership of 225,000 shares but put a value of roughly 3.3M on that company. His share was therefore worth about $670k.
Melinda had also incorporated Genysis Robotics. Matt had the largest initial share of this, but Scott started with 25%. At 10% dilution from initial funding by Genysis Mining of $300,000 for 10% gave it a valuation of 3M and his stake was therefore worth $675k.
His bank account had $144.67, not even a rounding error in his net worth of over $2.8 million. 19 years old and he was a millionaire! Of course, if any of their companies failed, the whole thing fell apart. They would have to work really hard to see any of that money.
Barry and Professor Springer had got a prototype micro-fusion generator working. This should have been cause for a huge celebration, but Barry was kind of grumpy about it.
“We wasted a ton of money on prototypes that just melted or exploded. We had to use over half the mass on thermal distribution and cooling and the power efficiency is crap. You get less usable power output than you would from a lithium battery, and it produces a lot of waste heat.” Barry complained.
“You built a working fusion reactor. Doesn’t that mean it can run for a really long time without a recharge?” Scott argued.
“Sure, but our process for getting deuterium takes a lot of work and we finished off Rudolph’s initial investment buying the centrifuges and equipment to extract from the heavy water molecules.”
“But Melinda gave you more cash to play with.”
“I know, we were grateful for that. But our fueling process sucks and we probably only have enough stockpiled for 2 or 3 years of operation for the prototype. We could hire someone to make more, but it’s going to be a bottleneck if we are trying to keep dozens of robots and vehicles fueled.” Barry said.
“Well, it still sounds much better than long cables and a barge with diesel generators. Anyway, why don’t you take a break from working in the lab and see if Glitch_HR training has anything that sparks an idea.” Scott replied. “Besides, we have finals coming up in a couple weeks so it’s OK to put things on pause for a bit.”
“It’s really dumb that we are millionaires and still have to go to stupid classes, “ Barry complained. “Melinda said I can’t quit yet because we can’t afford all the lab space and equipment that Rudolph lets me use.”
“So weird that you call Professor Springer ‘Rudolph’,” Scott laughed.
“Ugh, I agree! But he insisted. He also invited me to visit his family over Christmas too. He’s a really great guy and super smart. Even if he is older than my dad.”
“How are things going with you and Elsa?” Scott asked.
“We went on a date. I thought it went really well and we still talk on the phone, but she never wants to go out anymore,” Barry said sadly.
“Oh, I’ll ask Adrianna what is going on.” Scott said, wishing he could help his friend.
“Supposedly she is working on some project with Melinda, so I expect you will be part owner of another company soon.” Barry laughed.
“How would that work? I have nothing to do with it.” Scott protested.
“Wrong! Melinda says any company that uses Glitch_HR you get 25% of the starting equity. According to her it is the greatest invention since capitalism. I think she is also really grateful that you built all those tools that let her be CEO of multiple companies. She did hint that we were in trouble after the first year was up - she is going to get paid!” Barry laughed.
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“Probably shouldn’t admit it to her, but she deserves it.” Scott said and Barry agreed.
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Angela Stein was amazed by the volume and quality of work produced by the enigmatic Melinda White. Honestly, why had she never heard of this woman before? Her resumé was blank, but she couldn’t believe a talent like this wasn’t running a Fortune 500 company. She was either hiding something or she had been one of those genius housewives that started a career after staying home with the kids. She had heard of some proving themselves more competent than managers who had been working the whole time.
First, she had bought an interest in an energy company. It smelled a bit fishy since the stakeholders were the same as the mining company. Angela initially worried this was some kind of shell game. Was she trying to keep control of the company while shuffling money around into various shell companies?
Melinda had then shared with her some redacted plans, a video tour of the lab and a demo of a prototype. There was an interview with a well-respected scientist who was a minority partner and equity investor. She was a finance person, but she knew enough about science to realize a controlled fusion reactor was a huge deal. $300k for a 9.1% stake was an absolute steal! She could have gotten 10 times that for a similar stake if she shopped it around. The synergy with the mining company was significant, so after her initial disbelief Angela was firmly in the Melinda White fan club.
Then Melinda sent her a detailed description of a similar sized initial stake in Genysis Robotics. Once again, a lot of the same players who Melinda affectionately called “Her boys”. The lead engineer on this group was the talented Matthew Stanton who had designed a mining robot which was the intellectual property of Genysis Mining. She had again questioned this. If we already owned the design for the robot, what was the benefit of investing in a stake in this robotics company that currently had no assets? Melinda had explained that the Robotics company would be keeping the technology needed to improve the designs and manufacture them.
Angela would reserve judgment. They owned the schematics and if Matt’s company charged more than a couple million per robot, she could insist on a fair bidding process and get them manufactured overseas. She didn’t want to have to dilute her ownership too much to get up and running. Spending too much on robots would cripple the operation.
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Like everyone else, Matt was caught up in the whirlwind of Melinda’s executive planning. He had been tinkering with his designs and trying to come up with a plan to build a prototype for less than 50k in material and tools. He was also dreading what would likely be 1000 hours of labor to build it.
“Matt my boy.”
“I’m working as hard as I can. I think I have a plan, but it will cost 50k and take at least 6 months to build.”
“...Yes, I anticipated you would be struggling. You now have a new company and $300k initial investment.” Melinda explained a few details before continuing.
“So, I’m hiring a couple people to help you. They contributed to some of the training and tools you use. They are currently working at jobs that are low paying and unsatisfying. Both are a bit more senior than you, so you will be lower on the org chart. Don’t worry, you will still have the most equity in your company. I’m directing you to hold off on the mining robot and focus on building robotics that can help you assemble prototypes. Ideally, they could also allow small scale manufacturing runs once you work out the prototype.”
“That might be helpful. I’ll start working on some designs.”
“Great - I think you should focus on initial designs, and I will instruct your co-workers to refine and assemble the initial build. After this we can use this system to bootstrap future versions or test out prototypes of other robots.”
“Awesome!” said Matt.
“... Oh, both these guys are really into building junk for robot fighting leagues. You better not let that be a distraction.” Melinda demanded.
These guys were into robot fighting? Matt was going to focus on his assignment but would find the time to give that a try!
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Adrianna was not a millionaire yet with the current math, but she had been happy to dive into her current project of designing an undersea habitat that could support 20 people indefinitely. She had been supplied a list of materials with different properties and costs to acquire. These didn’t match anything she had in her civil engineering classes. Where was Barry getting this list?
The CAD programs she used in her school classes were not well suited to this kind of design. Glitch_HR had mentioned some articles on space habitat design using a different program. It was very expensive - $12,000. She mentioned her struggles to Melinda and within an hour she received a link to download and a license key.
Things had changed since they got that Wall Street person involved! Glitch_HR skill training helped her learn quickly, but finals were approaching so she didn’t think she’d have a design ready. There were a lot of things that she couldn’t finalize. She didn’t have an area reserved for power generation and assumed that robots would dock there to recharge. The original proposal just had a big battery that would be charged up by a surface ship with diesel generators. Last week they told her to scrap that and just leave a space for “unknown power supply”.
She had planned a large kelp garden closer to the surface. They would pump in waste CO2 and pull out oxygen. Melinda had hired someone to design this module, so she just focused on the system to circulate the air. Adrianna really enjoyed the creativity of designing something like this, but realistically she thought it was missing too many pieces to be built in the next couple years.