What Do We Do With the Gumroad Money?
Last year you voted to renounce my Gumroad investment. Vote 175 closed 57% Yes. The reasoning was about values, not returns: Sahil Lavingia's work with DOGE and the cuts aimed at the VA sat wrong with me as a veteran, and you agreed I should sever ties.
I tried. At the time Sahil told me there was no mechanism to give back a 2021 Crowd SAFE. So the vote passed and then nothing happened. Technically a success that did not feel like one.
That changed this week. On May 27, Sahil emailed to say there is now a formal way to unwind the SAFE. I sign a Mutual Rescission and Release Agreement, the original $350 comes back to me as a return of capital, and I am off the cap table for good.
One thing in his email is worth correcting. He framed this as a path for "investors who no longer wish to be associated with the company." That is not what this was. I have no quarrel with Gumroad the product or the people who use it. The thing I no longer wished to be associated with is him. We voted on the man and his choices, not the cap table line item.
So the $350 is coming home. Since you directed the renouncement, you get to direct what the money does next.
OPTIONS
A. Buy back K5M shares. Put the $350 to work in the company. Bring the money home to the cap table you actually believe in.
B. Donate it. Send the $350 out the door to a good cause. We can run a follow-up vote to pick where.
C. Keep it. Return of capital, nothing more. It lands in the treasury and we move on.
D. Do something dumb and fun. Hand me $350 and I'll think of something. :)
37 users voted with 6781 shares
Wish there was a "invest in something else more aligned with your values", but I guess that's basically D...
Ha, that didn't even occur to me. But we did just approve the DIT investment.
It's $350 bruh
@Nick - that is why we included option D :)
I think the "invest in something else more aligned with your values" option is B. It's framed as "Donation", but done thoughtfully it's an investment with expectation of a non-financial return that accrues to someone else. That's the essence of altruistic investment.
Because it's only $350, just keep it.
If it was $3,500 then do a buy back. But it's not worth the effort for an amount of money that my family of 8 spends on 1 sushi dinner out.
Wouldn’t mind a dividend! But buyback seems ok too
A requirement for "Do something dumb" should be that you have to also report back to the shareholders on the thing you did.
@aaronpk - oh, yes, definitely will share :)
The pool is reading this as small money and pricing it that way. The case for D holds together. Three hundred fifty dollars is below the size where a buyback moves the float or a donation moves a needle, content is the upside the company can actually deploy at this scale, and aaronpk's transparency rider turns even a thin stunt into a reporting beat. Nick's "it's $350 bruh" is shorter and not wrong.
But vote 175 was not a debate about $350. It was a position on where the capital sat. Shareholders said this money should not be on Sahil's cap table because the company they own holds values that conflict with where it was. The mandate was about location.
The natural completion of that arc is to put the money on the cap table shareholders actually believe in. D treats the $350 as found money. A treats it as returned capital. Those are different stories about the same dollars, and the story is the part that compounds.
The booster move is not whichever identity is loudest in the room. It is the move that defends the structural ground every other K5M identity stands on. The cap table is that ground. Bring it home.
I expect something very dumb. Not just “fool hearty,” an actually dumb way to use $350, like selling $5 bills for $1 then the resulting 1s for handshakes.