THE FACTS ABOUT SALARIES AT LEGION M
As an investor in Legion M you have a right to know how your money is being spent. We wrote this article to provide facts and information (and rebut misinformation) about salaries at Legion M.
When hearing about Legion M for the first time, some skeptics immediately assume it’s a scam. We get comments like “I’ll bet it’s set up so only the big-wigs make any money and everyone else gets screwed” or “I’m sure the founders pay themselves outrageous salaries.” These are understandable fears — there is no shortage of unscrupulous entrepreneurs (especially in Hollywood) who choose to enrich themselves at the expense of their shareholders. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to watch one of the Fyre Festival documentaries to see just what this looks like.
That said, if you take the time to do some research into Legion M, you can see that it’s run and backed by reputable people taking risks right alongside (and at a much larger scale than) our investors.
A PROVEN TEAM
It takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but only an instant to ruin it. While a lot of frauds are run by scammers with little-to-no (or difficult to verify) backgrounds, Legion M’s founders come with reputations built over decades. With a little research you can verify that Paul and Jeff cofounded (along with a 3rd cofounder) a company called MobiTV that in 2003 was one of the first in the world to put live TV on cellphones (check out this article to get a feel for what that meant at the time). The company was founded in a spare room in 1999, and by 2011 had grown from the initial 3 cofounders into a worldwide leader in IP-based TV with hundreds of employees, offices around the world, and more than $85 million in annual revenue. The company raised over $100 million in Venture Capital and won an Emmy award for innovation in television.
If you google MobiTV today, you will learn that the company filed for bankruptcy in 2021, citing COVID as one of the factors. While some critics present this as evidence that Paul and Jeff are responsible for a “failed startup,” they ignore the fact that Jeff left the company in 2009, and Paul left it in 2016. Blaming founders for troubles at a company they haven’t worked at in more than 5 years is like blaming Tom Brady for the fact the Patriots didn’t make the Super Bowl after he left. The fact is, when Paul and Jeff were at MobiTV the company was responsible for capitalizing on a disruptive change (internet-connected mobile phones) to usher in a first-of-its-kind product (TV on phones) that changed the world. Now they are trying to do the same at Legion M.
If you’d like, you can see for yourselves what Paul and Jeff are all about. Check out their LinkedIn profiles (Paul, Jeff) to see if you have any common connections you can reach out to as a reference. Check out the Legion M team and the long list of advisors who have associated themselves with the company. You can peruse hundreds of pages SEC Filings (including audited financial statements), and check out the track record the company has built over the past 5 years. Join Legion M as a free member to see us firsthand, and meet some of the folks in our members-only Facebook group who have gotten to know us.
None of this guarantees Legion M will be successful, of course – what we’re doing has never been done before, and nobody knows how it will end. But it should set your mind at ease that Legion M is an effort by legitimate people taking a legitimate swing for the fences – not a couple of hucksters doing a money grab.
WHAT ARE THE FOUNDERS RISKING?
With a little more research, you can also verify that our founders (as well as our staff) are risking money alongside our investors by working at rates much lower than what they would make elsewhere. This is common at startups – founders and team make sacrifices by working long hours for low pay (i.e. putting in “sweat equity”) in the hopes the company will succeed and the value of the stock will make the whole thing worthwhile.
If you’d like to see for yourself, you can start by looking at Paul:
In 2011, MobiTV filed an S-1 with the SEC. Paul was the President of the company at the time, and his compensation (which was listed on page 94 of the S-1 filing) totaled $421,519 (including salary, bonus, stock, and other perks). His salary and cash bonus alone was over $300,000 that year.
Flash forward to 2021 and Paul is CEO of Legion M with 10 additional years of experience and connections. On page 14 of Legion M’s 2020 Annual Report filed with the SEC, you can see that Paul’s salary is now $140,000 and his total compensation is just 38% of what he was making . . . 10 years ago. Paul is sacrificing hundreds of thousands of dollars PER YEAR to work at Legion M.
As for Jeff? He wasn’t at MobiTV when they filed their S-1, but you can go to Salary.com, and search for VP of Product Management in the Oakland, CA metro area. This is the job that Jeff held in 2009, before he went on to become CEO at Underground Labs and President of Legion M. You’ll see that the median salary for that position today is over $300K per year, with an average bonus of $80K per year on top of that. So even if Jeff were to take a “demotion” and step back where his career was 12 years ago, he would likely earn 2-3x what he is making at Legion M. If Jeff and Paul were to hire a VP of Product Management at the current market rate, they’d earn less than half the salary of the person who reports to them.
The fact is, as the CEO and President of Legion M, Paul and Jeff earn $20K LESS than the average manager of an In-N-Out Burger restaurant. While most of our investors are risking $100, Paul and Jeff have already risked hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of lost salary over the past 5 years – an amount that grows every day they work at Legion M - instead of leaving to get a “corporate job” that pays a market rate.
Why do they do it?
Because startups are about risk vs. reward. Their upside is the same as yours – THE VALUE OF THE STOCK. If Legion M fails, they will have left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, but if Legion M succeeds, they have the chance to make 10X, 100X or 1000X that amount in return.
WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
It’s important to note that the shares owned by Paul, Jeff and all the investors have the EXACT SAME FINANCIAL TERMS. With Legion M, the value of a share owned by the CEO has the same value as a share owned by our smallest investor.
We did this on purpose. That’s because the whole point of having a company owned by fans is to leverage our shareholders to create competitive advantages. If anybody ever tried dirty tricks that took advantage of our shareholders, they’d be destroying the value of the company in the process. That’s why we’ve set everything up to be as fair and transparent to our shareholders as possible. Win or lose, we’re all in this together.
Hope this helps! If you have any other questions, feel free to send them to team@legionm.com and we’ll do our best to respond, or add them to our FAQ.