bill gross has my money

tim o’reilly blogged about how bill gross is into atoms now, or how idealab has shifted the focus from web businesses into businesses that make physical goods. which is all well and good, but the part that annoys me about idealab at this point is that the shares i have now held for the better part of a decade seem to have little chance of being tradable on the open market any time soon, or otherwise turning into money in my pocket in any foreseeable way.

back in the dotcom days when i worked for a second-generation geocities knock-off called homepage.com, there was a time when altavista agreed to buy us, but the board of directors (led by bill gross) shot it down. as a sort of consolation prize to employees that had been around for a while, they allowed us to convert some of our homepage.com options into idealab shares, which required exercising the options. the certificate for that has been in my drawer ever since.

why do i have the feeling that when the internet brands initial public offering is done, bill gross will have shares that he can then turn around and sell, and all i’ll get out of it is that idealab will be able to spin off some more of bill’s ideas?