I have warm feelings for both, Nate and Chad, but that could mislead me as we only know them through the podcast. Who knows what is going on in their lives. Sometimes things break apart for understandable reasons, which might be exacerbated by Chad having worked remotely for the last months. Just not being able to hash things out face-to-face could have been the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Personally, my default is to try not to speculate too much here beyond the obvious: this was neither planned nor pleasant.
It’s easy to see Nate a certain way because he is very open about his life outside of TR and he has surrounded himself with friends in business. He is a big personality and does goofy things from time to time. But at the end of the day, he is a CEO of a highly visible company. I think it can be jarring to people that don’t see the distinction between the two when he publicly has to act exclusively in his CEO role.
While I like Chad (from his public persona, anyway) the company has what appears to be a fairly hands-on CEO, a COO, senior Product and Marketing types, and likely little justification for more founder-level compensation.
That would be true if revenue (more critically, cash flow) was growing or not.
Chad would remain a shareholder, however, unless the initial shareholder agreement had a mechanism to buy out a minority shareholder (often the case), voluntarily or otherwise, and actually executing those clauses can get messy, typically down to valuation.
I think that this probably had nothing to do with what happened. At the very least, I would say that shaking up the format would have become necessary one way or the other.
Personally, I like that they are trying several new things and have rotating hosts. That always comes with the risk of disappointing people who like things the old way. I also prefer some formats over others, but overall I kinda like that each Friday morning I never know what kind of show I will get. The quality of the alternative formats has gotten better over time. @IvyAudrain has gotten into the groove and found her voice. Ditto for many of the recurring guests.
Overall, though, I feel that this change in podcast format would have happened one way or the other
That’s interesting in the context of the recent (voluntary) price rise. It does point to tightening the belt a little, and that could be a cause of conflict.
I agree. Nothing here has to be bad. It can be a different view of how the company was going to operate in the future. It can be just a different role that Chad wanted vs TR wanting him to do a certain roll. Chad has had a number of life changes as has Nate.
All this to say we wont know. Shareholder agreements deal with buyout clauses etc to deal with situations that keep the company going. Employee relationships are severed all the time with no disclosure. All I can say is given the message that comes from TR it means whatever the issue was resulted in TR and Chad terminating the relationship.
Not from the US but I thought LLC’s can have multiple owners.
In Canada we treat an LLC as a corporation even though the US doesnt.
Is ownership public knowledge?
I find it hard to believe this is a financial decision. Nate is loyal to a fault and i think he’d lose money to keep his inner circle supported. It seems to me that some kind of line had to be crossed. The statement was too rushed, emotional and one sided to be a simple disagreement. Id also add Nates body language, and chads for that matter, wasnt great on pod 410. I could be reading more into it, but Nate seems agitated and in distress. Chad was very stoic.
Given the news of Chad’s departure, that leaves a hole in the AACC podcast. Specifically, there’s currently no coach. I hope we hear in the not too distant future that the coach role is restored.
With regards to Chad, I wish him well. We have to respect Nate and TR, as the details aren’t ours to know.
Yes, in the USA an LLC can have multiple owners. I just pulled up the Articles of Organization of an LLC that I started in 2003 with 3 other members. All 4 of us were equal members, equal votes, and we had an operating agreement on decision making. It was a Texas LLC, and the Articles and operating agreement were not public information. You can have a member managed LLC, or a manager managed LLC. We were a member-managed LLC. Not totally germane to the thread, so I’ll leave it at that and go for a ride.
Isn’t @Jonathan a coach? I thought he has (had?) a coaching license and was coaching a local high school MTB team.
Plus, I don’t know whether @SarahLaverty has a coaching license, but she does have a degree in sports science. She is qualified to do all the deep dives even if she technically were not a coach.
They may not be called “shareholders”, but it’s a similar concept of “members”. And they can own various percentages depending on what was agreed. For these purposes, it’s similar to a corporation.
As others have said, an LLC can be set up in various ways, including with regard to the departure of a member/employee. A member/employee may be forced to sell their shares to the remaining members if their employment is terminated, or maybe not. In some cases, they could even sell their ownership interest to a third party, but this is often prohibited without the other members’ consent. The valuation of the departing member’s ownership interest is where things can get tricky. If everyone cannot agree on a price, then there may be mechanisms for determining a valuation, which could involve bringing in an expert third party. This can be time-consuming and costly, and so sometimes the remaining members will just offer a generous buy-out to resolve the issue quickly.
In addition to the LLC agreement, Chad may have had an employment agreement as well, which also affects his and TR’s rights and obligations. Finally, there could have been a termination agreement or NDA that also impacts the legal situation.
With respect to IP and ownership of the plans, it is highly likely that TR owns everything, and that Chad’s departure will not affect TR’s ability to use any Chad-created content. Frankly in the US, it would be shocking and basically negligent if TR allowed its employees to own what they create while employed by TR.
On the topic of relay MTB races, from my experience, it’s almost always faster to just go lap by lap if you’re able to go flat out.
The transition time is much less than you think.
The only time I’d go multiple laps was if the lap traffic was so heinous that you were riding way under your capacity, then you might try stay ahead of a group/certain riders an extra lap to search for clear trail.
TR AI is rooted in Chad’s sauce but they may not need him at this stage. Now that TR has its own large bank of training data, there really isn’t a need for someone to breakdown the evidence to convince us to buy the product.
Wow. That’s huge. As others have said, the wording was… strange, but it still leaves the possibilities wide open. It’s my hope that the departure was amicable and that Chad can still, in some way, contribute. It doesn’t feel that way, but we’ll see.