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SI fires staff writer Tom Taulli. WSJ article...
Well, he was terminated, not necessarily fired and it's unclear whether
he was part of the staff or a free-lancer. Anyway, here's the big WSJ
article: wsj.com
March 12, 1999
Heard on the Net
Split Between Silicon Investor
And Analyst Spurs Acrimony
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Silicon Investor and its frequently quoted market analyst abruptly
severed ties
this week, in an acrimonious split between the financial discussion
forum and the
man who generated significant publicity for the site.
Tom Taulli says he was fired late Monday from his job as a writer and
market
analyst for the Web site. A spokesman for Go2Net, Silicon Investor's
parent
company, would say only that Mr. Taulli no longer works for Go2Net, but
declines to say whether he was fired.
What's more, Mr. Taulli says the company on Monday also canceled stock
options on 34,000 shares, after accounting for a stock split, that could
have
been worth $2.5 million based on Go2Net's closing stock price of $84
Thursday. The Go2Net spokesman declines to comment on Mr. Taulli's
compensation. Mr. Taulli says he plans to fight to have the options
reinstated.
Mr. Taulli says he was told he was being let go because of a dispute
over a
vacation he took in Hawaii last week. Company officials contend Mr.
Taulli left
town without warning them he would be away, he says.
Mr. Taulli wrote a daily column for Silicon
Investor and a weekly column for StockSite,
another Go2Net unit. He says part of his role as a
Silicon Investor columnist -- and a significant
reason the site wanted to hire him -- was to act as
a market analyst for media inquiries. Indeed, Mr.
Taulli has been quoted in scores of stories --
mostly about initial public offerings -- since he began writing for
Silicon Investor
in July 1998, giving the site valuable publicity.
For its part, Go2Net says Mr. Taulli wasn't an official employee, but
rather a
free-lancer with the title of "market analyst for Silicon Investor."
Mr. Taulli says he was shocked to learn about his termination. "Up until
Monday night, there was no complaint, no warning," Mr. Taulli says. "We
had a
real good relationship."
Mr. Taulli, 30 years old, has become something of a celebrity in the IPO
market, often popping up in newspaper stories and on television to talk
about
hot new offerings. But he acknowledges his rise to fame originally had
more to
do with media interest than with his talents as an analyst. He says he
hasn't had
much formal training in investment banking, except for an undergraduate
degree
in finance, and says he learned most of what he knows just by poking
around
the Internet.
After college, Mr. Taulli worked briefly as a
broker for Baraban Securities, which was
acquired in 1997 by InterFirst Capital, of Los
Angeles. He bounced around between a few jobs
before going back to school, and during his
second year of law school he started a Web site
where he occasionally published his thoughts on IPOs. His writing drew
the
attention of some financial sites, and in 1997 he began working as a
spokesman
for IPO Monitor, a Calabasas, Calif., firm.
"It started slow, but late last year it really took off and I was
getting a ton of
calls" from reporters, Mr. Taulli says. "Soon I was on CNN."
The media attention is what got him the job with Silicon Investor, he
says, but
his complex relationship with Go2Net started earlier.
He began working as a regular columnist for Go2Net's StockSite in
October
1997. At the time, he was writing a market analysis column for TechWeb
(www.techweb.com5), a job he still holds. TechWeb is owned by CMP
Media, a Manhasset, N.Y., publisher.
Mr. Taulli says that as compensation for that work he was given options
to buy,
adjusting for a stock split, 1,500 shares of Go2Net stock at $1.50 a
share (the
stock was trading around $4 at the time). He says he exercised those
options
on Tuesday and sold the stock -- his first opportunity after learning he
had been
fired -- for a net profit of $121,500.
"I didn't want to waste any time, given what had happened with my other
options," he says.
Mr. Taulli sold his remaining Go2Net stock -- 6,300 shares -- later in
the week
for about $531,000. The stock was part of compensation he received for
his
work with yet another Web site, HyperMart, which Go2Net bought in August
1998. HyperMart provides free Web pages to businesses.
Mr. Taulli says the only compensation he has received from Go2Net for
his
work at Silicon Investor is about $1,000 in cash, which was part of a
$500-a-month salary agreement that went into effect at the beginning of
the
year, and severance pay of $200.
Going forward, Mr. Taulli says he will continue to write for TechWeb and
has
started a new part-time writing job for a Ziff-Davis Web site.
Meanwhile, a
book he has written, "Investing in IPOs," was recently published by
Bloomberg
Personal Bookshelf.
He says he also plans on concentrating more of his energy on a company
he
recently founded, Examweb.com, which makes test-preparation software for
bar exams.
Write to Jason Anders at jason.anders@news.wsj.com6
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