War Is Coming Communications.

I trust you three have had a chance to chat?

I know you now know that I'm Tony Stark, from Earth 616. I've been Iron Man since I was 19. There are comic books about this, apparently. You can check them out at your leisure, if you'd like to get a sense of the sort of guy I am.

Over dinner, Natasha asked me what I would do, if I'd gotten control of this company suddenly and unexpectedly. I'll tell you what I told her.

My first question: Who is your talent? Who do you have besides Tony Stark that can do what Tony Stark did? Because without a genius engineering goose to lay golden eggs, you might as well sell off your current inventory and declare bankruptcy now, because tech is an extremely competitive, expensive, and risky industry. Even if you're 100% equity financed and you've got a fantastic credit rating, it's going to be impossible for you to get project funding when you have no real assets (tech is one of those industries where you really don't have any assets to sell off when a company goes under because tech is always evolving, so you lose projects to depreciation and obsolescence very rapidly, which makes it extremely difficult to get people to lend you money.) Additionally, you have no reasonable assurance of future cash flows once your current inventories have dried up. You can't keep going back to the well of models Stark has already built and sold, because tech is an evolving industry. Theoretically, you could reorganize the company as an LLC to license the designs, but you'd have to fire almost your entire staff. And your LLC will be useless when the patents expire, if not much sooner. And that's only if Stark has been good about submitting patents on new products. Without him here to defend his work, the company is pretty much SOL.

And assuming you had the talent, which -- I'm not convinced that you do, at this point, given the company's size and the time it's been here, not really enough time to groom someone to take over -- who do you have in your board of directors who has experience running a company like this? Who is your CEO? Your CFO? Your COO? What is your debt/equity ratio? Are you publicly or privately traded? How do you finance your projects? Does someone on your team know how to propel a machine like this forward? Is your staff committed to seeing you through this transition? What is your break-even analysis for any ongoing projects?

So now. Natasha asked me what I would do if I were you.

My answer depends on one thing: what I would do if I were you and in charge of this company, or what I would do if I were me and in charge of this company. Because those are two very different questions.

If I were me, I would feel comfortable stepping in and taking control of an entity like this, because I already know this business, this industry. I am confident that I could step into Tony Stark's shoes, and push even further than he did, because my world's tech is actually more advanced. If I were in charge, I'd restructure and shift focus away from weapons development and towards dragging Kansas, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. 

But -- if I were you and I'd just gotten control of Stark Industries, without any prior knowledge of business development or complex engineering... I'd declare bankruptcy now, sell off any inventory and other assets, and split the profits. 

Or. 

OR. 

I'd take Tony Stark on as a partner, give him 51% of the voting shares, divide the remaining shares between the rest of you, and get moving. 

Thoughts?