Cyberland and Firechick Merge!

More information At: http://www.slsolutions.org/

Cyberland is pleased to announce that today, a merger was finalized between two Second Life investment land companies, Cyberland and Firechick Inc. Cyberland is Second Life's FIRST publicly owned and traded company, more information on which can be found at the URL above. Firechick is one of Second Life's long standing investment land companies, owned by Jauani Wu.

The resulting company will retain the name Cyberland. The merger results in Cyberland's grid-wide land inventory being increased by approximately 50,000 square meters. The 30,000 shares issued as result of the merger agreement will make Jauani Wu one of Cyberland's largest share holders.

Jauani Wu will remain very much in the loop at Cyberland. He will be consulting with Shaun Altman on a regular basis, providing valuable expertise and market insight. Overall, this merger is win:win:win for Cyberland, Firechick and all Cyberland investors. The resulting company has a considerably strengthened position, and the future is looking brighter than ever!



-Shaun

I’m very excited about this merger. I believe that Cyberland offers an opportunity to small scale land traders to participate more competitively in the land economy against many of the large scale traders, particularly under the new auction rules that places new land on the auction at the sim level.

I started with a small investment in Cyberland to familiarize myself with the setup. After several lengthy discussions with Shaun about his vision for the company and his financial objectives, I quickly realized that although a customer service heavy small tier operation does fill a niche, it could be filled much better, efficiently, and profitably as part of a larger operation with a dedicated property/sales manager. The key advantages that Second Life’s flagship land business – DreamLand - has had over competitors is the scale of the operation and the nearly fulltime customer service that its operator provides to the community, something Cyberland will soon be able to match.

The structure that Cyberland provides has the potential to establish a second cornerstone on the Second Life land market, but one that is accessible to any resident of SL, something I am very thrilled to be a part of from its early stages.

Jauani Wu

This does indeed sound like an exciting event. I'll be waiting for the [verified] earnings report before I jump in with both feet. But nonetheless, congratulations Shaun and Juanui!

Wow. This event was greeted with far less enthusiam than I would have thought.

W00T!!


There ya go.

Seriously, Jauani's addition to this venture lends it more credibility imo.
I will be watching this one closely.

How many more IPO shares are going to be sold? Seems like there are still way too many available.

The IPO of 33,000 shares, which I thought would be a good number given typical early anti-trust issues, proved to be nowhere near enough. They were all gone in under 2 hours and an artificial scarcity of shares emerged with demand still extreme. I decided shortly after this to go ahead and do a single secondary for the full balance of the 1,000,000 shares to eventually be issued. This seemed to make more sense than the pre-IPO plan when I looked at the actual numbers than diluting the market time and time again with small block secondary offers.

We're nearly 20% done with this process about 2 weeks into the program. It won't be instant, but it shouldn't last TOO much longer. Also, if it seems that share demand levels out for a meaningful period of time, I will likely pull the remaining portion of the share offer.

After this share offering is done the exchange will also get on with the business of finding and listing more viable companies, so things should start to get REALLY interesting from there.

lol your secondary was a giant greenshoe?

i am curious to see what you have pulled off here shaun. Given that i missed the whole event, i haven't carved out time to see what you've pulled together. Do you have some sort of vehicle for secondary share trades? Articles of incorporation? An elected board to approve mergers like this?

i suppose it's all now on the forums somewhere and i should do some searching

hope it's going well!

EDIT:
wow shaun, just checked out slsolutions.org

i love that you are trying to make this work. It will be interesting to see how long until something like this has to fall under the regulations of the SEC -- or if it already does. I guess you are fundamentally selling a security... will have to look up my series 7 and 63 notes again on all this stuff lol

Unfortunately, Cyberland is not SL's first publicly traded company, since it has never publicly released its earnings reports or financials.

As far as I know the Neualtenburg Cooperative is the first and only publicly owned and traded company, with complete financials posted and updated online every month.

~Ulrika~

umm... ulrika, you can be publicly traded and owned and still not publicly disclose financial or ownership information... as long as the SEC and state regulators allow this to go on...

Haven't been around a month. All things in time.

What do the SEC and state regulators have to do with business in SL?

~Ulrika~

any security marketed to the US public falls under federal and state regulations and there are very strict rules on how such things can be marketed and who is allowed to be an investor if the stock is unregistered... in this case, given that the company has not incorporated in RL, it's probably not going to cause a problem... this is all way ahead of the policy makers for now... but this is not a legal opinion

i thought neualtenburg was some kind of hippie land co-op. they aren't the same thing.

Fundamentally, Neualtenburg is a business created to provide citizens of SL access to group-owned land. The business provides a modest return on the initial investment, which was used used to purchase a sim and to support vacant-lot land-use fees. As lots are sold and costs drop, a return on investment is provided to bond holders for taking the risk.

We are a nonprofit land cooperative in the sense that we do not make a profit off of monthly land-use fees (we are not land lords). Instead the sim transitions over to complete private ownership and members direct the future of the sim through self governance.

By doing this we became SL's first:

1. Nonprofit land cooperative.
   
2. Company to disclose all financial information.
   
3. Democratic republic.
   
4. Truly public corporation.

How's that for a hippie land co-op?

~Ulrika~

as i expected, a very wonderful infomercial for n-burger.

so what you have just posted is that neualtenburg is not a publically traded land trading company like Cyberland, but a non profit land cooperative.

it's great that there is a neualtenburg, but i don't understand what it has to do with a profit oriented land trading businesses like Cyberland or why you have injected advertising it into this discussion.

I'm sorry. My posts had nothing to do with being an infomercial any more than the initial post did. I just saw that the merged business was being billed as the first publicly traded company along with a post a few down asking if the financials had been made publicly available.

I'm quite proud of the fact that our business as an investment opportunity is the only business in SL that provides complete disclosure of financials. I guess I just wanted to toot my horn.

The good news is that your thread gets bumped a lot and more folks read it. Congratulations on your merger and I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors!

~Ulrika~

i know the thread bumping is a great value added feature.

re: financials
from my conversations with shaun, i have come to understand that there will be disclosure of the financials once a month. they would be essential to inform the investors.

re: publically traded company
i think it's very important to note that n-burger is not a publically traded company, nor is it an investment oppurtunity. a stake in neualtenburg is a money saving device, not a money making one. i'm also not certain how shares of neualtenburg are bought and sold freely. my understanding is that it requires approval by land managers. feel free to direct me to the page describing the procedure.

Cyberland and Neualtenburg are two very different approaches to land. neualtenburg is an excellent experiment/prototype, but it differs fundamentally in that it is a non profit co-op focused on providing tier leveraging for land users. cyberland is a land investment operation, and it is not focused on land use, but land arbitage.

In what sense is any of this arbitrage ?
(I can't find "arbitage" in the dictionary so it is not something different I have never heard of).

I hear this word beginning to be used more and more around SL.

I thought the whole point of arbitrage was that you DON'T invest in anything or hold anything. You buy and sell almost simultaneously, taking an instant profit from an instantaneous difference in rates at the two exchange interfaces. Isn't that arbitrage ?

Dictionary says
"The simultaneous purchase and sale of similar commodities in different markets to take advantage of a price discrepancy."

Here's another
"the opportunity to buy an asset at a low price then immediately selling it on a different market for a higher price."

Not my subject, so educate me if I'm wrong, but from everything I read, simultaneity is of the essence. If you hold the asset at all, waiting for the price to move, that ain't arbitrage.

Have I misunderstood what the company we are discussing is doing ?

Bravo! I'd love to see more if this in the future.

We do allow true investment with return in the city. You can read about it on this page. Currently there are four initial investors, me, Gwyneth Llewelyn, Sudane Erato, and Catfart Grayson. We are covering the server costs and the accumulated land-use fees until the sim is self sufficient. For taking on that risk we will receive a one-time return or may keep our investment in place to cover the next sim. It's like Ginko only people will actually see their money again.

Ah yes. That's right! I forgot that you're into arbitrage. That's a much needed service in SL. I found that there were never was enough capacity to take my land when I needed to dump it. I definitely see a market for it. Once I just released the land to the vultures.

~Ulrika~

yes this can be a problem. land investment companies fill this niche so that players like yourself do not need to release your land to the governor when you'r ina jam but can seek out a land traders services and receive some L$ compensation for your land. i'm not sure if there has been a lack for this capacity, but if there has been one, i'm sure cyberland can help fill it. regardless, there is definitely a market for it because there is money being made.

IMHO, this is a pretty serious statement. You should back this quote up with concrete proof that money is being stolen at Ginko, or retract it as slanderous libel.

Also, mostly out of curiousity as to whether I'm representing my company properly as the first, I'll put your claim to be SL's first publicly owned and traded company to the test. I'd like to acquire a large stake in the company, quickly and quietly, as a public investor. Is there a market website that I can go to or a prim that I can pay to do this without direct approval and oversight from you or your company? Or are you able to refuse my purchase of these shares? Is shares even the term, or are we actually buying and selling land? If it's land, I'll be building a mall on mine which includes a 1,000 slot machine casino, or as close to that as I can get within the prim limits of my land.

Also, once I acquire my stake, I'd like to almost immediately sell it on the same open market. Can I also do this through the market interface mentioned above, again without any approval or oversight from you or your company about my sale or the new owner?

If you can't say yes to these questions, you're not operating a publicly owned and traded company, but rather a private land trust masquerading as one. If you CAN answer yes, link me to the market and the financial data. After reviewing it, perhaps I'll become and active trader in the N-Berg market.

It was suffixed with a wink, which implies that it was neither slander [sic] nor libel but humor.

Normally, a monkey-beating-on-his-chest post such as the above would warrant a world-famous spine-crushing Ulrika retort, however I will instead will keep it serious, as your reply provides me with a vehicle to describe my project, while simultaneously educating folks about the difference between stocks and bonds.


Our city technically offers bonds, sometimes known in finance and economics as a debenture. A bond is a debt instrument that obligates the issuer (in this case the Neualtenburg Cooperative) to the bondholder the principal plus interest. Our corporation borrows the face amount of the bond from its buyer, pays interest on that debt while it is outstanding, and then redeems the bond by paying back the debt.

While our bonds are securities, they differ from shares of stock. Stock is an ownership interest (termed "equity" but bonds are "debt". Therefore, a shareholder is an owner, where a bond-holder is a creditor. Bonds are issued by governments and companies and sold through banks and stock brokers. In this case they were sold through the Neualtenburg Bank. They enable the cooperative to finance long-term investments with external funds.

So, to summarize, we sell bonds to creditors as long-term investments and provide principle plus interest after a sim fills up. By the nature of the bond market and the land business itself, it is low-volume and thus does not justify a web-based interface as a more liquid security such as stocks do. That's not to say that someday we wouldn't like an automated system, it's just that with a bond maturation period of four months, what's the point?


Now here's a question for you. Shouldn't someone who's running a stock market already know all this?

~Ulrika~

how could he know this about n-burger when you initially presented it as a publically traded company.

Not a very funny joke, especially from someone in your position as a similar investment banking operator. Seems to me like slander/libel masquerading as humor. I'm open to being wrong here though. Let it stand if you like.



Quite the contrary. You came to this thread to state that you were in fact SL's first publicly owned and traded company. I wanted to ensure that I wasn't falsely describing my company as such and by doing so, taking credit away from you where credit may have been due. If anyone else out there is operating SL's first publicly owned and traded company without my knowledge of it, please let me know! The virtual world is a big place afterall!



I'm quite aware of what a bond is, but thank you for the explination. I think it adequately clarifies your position for others. It appears that you are a private partnership, issuing bonds (taking out loans) to secure public sector funding. You will debt service these bonds (loans) for a fixed term, and then pay off the principal. You are not selling equity in the company. Am I understanding correctly? If so, I may like a bond or two.

I sincerely applaud your initiative. SL bonds are a very interesting development as well. However, it still seems to be apples and oranges.

I'm issuing stock in a publicly owned and traded company. As far as I can tell, still SL's first. It might be interesting to have a bond system on the exchange though. I'm planning a lot of exciting things for the future and I may add this to the list. Thanks for a great idea.