"As if this wasn’t enough, his recommendation led to a staggering 1,100% rise in Signal’s stocks. Many more are following suit and giving their goodwill to Signal."
Signal isn't a publicly traded company, they have no stock. I would expect that the author would have figured out that the stock which went up after Elon's tweet wasn't the Signal Foundation, but an unrelated company.
Or even further, why is people so obsessed about what Elon Musk thinks in the first place? Ok, he likes memes, rockets, Signal and Dogecoin. Let him, not sure why people are even listening to him outside of his domains anyways. People are taking a tweet like "Use Signal" to mean "reportedly quite upset at Whatsapp’s new terms of services and privacy policies and had called all his followers to switch to Signal" which are two vastly different sentiments, but somehow people are all eating this up...
Seriously, the whole article is about Signal being run by a non-profit. I don't think the rest of it was horrible but a mistake like this makes it feel like it was written time of the market reporting bots that write all of the useless articles on stock news.
It's funny, but have you ever checked what does "non-profit" company actually mean in the US? You would be surprised as it has nothing with an inability of gaining income. I don't remember that fact by heart, but it was something like - until a company doesn't spend more than 50% in total on wages or any benefits for internal team including founders and investors (like salary, bonuses, benefits all kind, dividends etc.) you can have any income and still be eligible for non-profit status.
Yeah there definitely feels like having a "maximum compensation" for any individual involved with a non-profit should be considered. Lots of horror stories around about people abusing the system. That being said I'm pretty sure things are ironclad that you cannot sell stock in a non-profit.
To be fair it's not all the time the case. The fact that company is not publicly trade doesn't stop people, random investors, business angels, VC and others buy and sell its shares openly with some extra corporate limitations. The difference is only with a company valuation cap and how it was set. I guess that current investors of a Foundation are well aware of a current valuation. At least, for the tax purposes. So probably the author meant that rise in such a valuation that was somehow estimated.
I was disappointed in the post -- a lot of the comments are complaining that the whole article could have been summed up as "they're non-profit -- donations, silly"; I agree[0].
And the answer was a bit of a non-answer. How do they make money[1]? Easy answer -- since the organization behind it is non-profit, it doesn't (which is even more confusing since the author seems to think their "stock" went up 1,100%?!). For me, however, the question isn't "How do they make money", it's "Are they able to make enough money that they will continue to be around for me to rely on?"[2].
If I were a Signal user, that last part would be the only reason I'd be interested in clicking, and the article didn't really answer that.
[0] Not knocking the author -- perhaps it's not a great post for the HN crowd because the summary version wouldn't have been news to any of us, but may have been news to people outside of our industry
[1] I've always loved that statement -- "Make" Money -- but I would have chosen something more precise; I read it as "How is Signal Profitable", hence my taking issue with the answer, but I equally recognize that I'm being pedantic.
[2] Which, itself, is simply a variant of "When I need it, will it work?" -- important, because (knowing nothing about Signal other than the name and its relation to WhatsApp) if the product can survive without the company (i.e. software that operates without server hardware managed/funded by a company -- Bitcoin)
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] thread"As if this wasn’t enough, his recommendation led to a staggering 1,100% rise in Signal’s stocks. Many more are following suit and giving their goodwill to Signal."
Signal isn't a publicly traded company, they have no stock. I would expect that the author would have figured out that the stock which went up after Elon's tweet wasn't the Signal Foundation, but an unrelated company.
Deeper topics like how the funds are managed, used and grown are nowhere.
The financial state of the non profit is largely a mystery as of today. Similar to their server code based on the github check ins
And the answer was a bit of a non-answer. How do they make money[1]? Easy answer -- since the organization behind it is non-profit, it doesn't (which is even more confusing since the author seems to think their "stock" went up 1,100%?!). For me, however, the question isn't "How do they make money", it's "Are they able to make enough money that they will continue to be around for me to rely on?"[2].
If I were a Signal user, that last part would be the only reason I'd be interested in clicking, and the article didn't really answer that.
[0] Not knocking the author -- perhaps it's not a great post for the HN crowd because the summary version wouldn't have been news to any of us, but may have been news to people outside of our industry
[1] I've always loved that statement -- "Make" Money -- but I would have chosen something more precise; I read it as "How is Signal Profitable", hence my taking issue with the answer, but I equally recognize that I'm being pedantic.
[2] Which, itself, is simply a variant of "When I need it, will it work?" -- important, because (knowing nothing about Signal other than the name and its relation to WhatsApp) if the product can survive without the company (i.e. software that operates without server hardware managed/funded by a company -- Bitcoin)