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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (144914)	8/6/2002 9:37:03 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Shares should not be permitted to be used for payment of goods and services. That is what the cash raised during the IPO is for. Vendors and consultants often take shares as payment from startups - not post-IPO, but usually pre-VC. If the company was already public and flush with cash (or flush with VC cash), they would not need to pay with potentially worthless paper. Startups do this to conserve hard to come by cash and the recipients take it, reducing or in lieu of cash payments, because they see an opportunity for greater profit. In AMZN's case, if memory serves, one such early supplier turned a low five figure sale of computer equipment (I think it was computers, anyway) into some $30 million of stock sale proceeds. Should they have been prohibited from selling until AMZN makes a profit? Why? Glenn, I understand your objective, if it is to protect investors from being cheated, but 1) I do not agree that they are cheated if they willingly and knowingly ignored all warnings and disclosures, provided that the disclosures were lawful, and 2) the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bob